50 PETER CAMPBELL

MENTAL HEALTH TESTIMONY ARCHIVE
 
PETER CAMPBELL
 
C905/50/01-04/vhs 01 of 01
 
Original on DVCPro
Copy on VHS
 
 
 
Interviewed by Pete Fleischmann
Camera by Ken Laingdown
 
Transcribed by Julie Sharman
 May 2000
 


[Start of DVC Pro Tape 1 of 1 – Start of VHS Tape 1 of 1]
 
`Ok…’
 
`Yeah…;
 
`Yeah Pete, if you could… perhaps you could tell me about your… your mother and your father?’
 
`My mother and father were… born and brought up in… in England.  My father was… Scottish, the family was Scottish, but they didn’t live in Scotland until after… the end of the Second World War.  My mother was English and my mother and father met, during the First World… during the Second World War.  She… he was a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps and she… she was a nurse and he was… he was attached to, at that point, to the… anti-aircraft of batteries around London, at the time of the Battle of Britain, and that’s how… how they met and got married and then after… after the end of the war went, went to live in Scotland.’
 
`Right, and were you… were you born in… in Scotland?’
 
`Yeah.  I was born in… a little village called Strathtay, which is about… about twenty miles, twenty five miles north… north west of… of Perth in, in… in the Highlands, in the mountains, and Strathtay is, is on the banks of the River Tay, and then I… spent the first part of my childhood, in Strathtay and then… and when I was about twelve, thirteen, we moved to… a farm, near Blairgowrie which is a sort of small town in East Perthshire, but also in… in the Highlands.’
 
`Uh huh, so the first, where you were born, that was like a… a sort of very small country almost?’
 
`Yeah, it was… it was a… it was a small, village in, in, in a kind of… in a, in a valley.  It was kind of farmland and moorland, and… then the second part of my childhood went… I went, went, we went to live in Blairgowrie or near Blairgowrie, we were, we were, we were kind more isolated.  We lived on a farm which was about five miles from the nearest village, and used to get cut off quite… frequently, in, in the winter… so it was a fairly isolated, upbringing really.’
 
`And was your father practising as a doctor during this time?’
 
`No, my father didn’t… didn’t practice medicine after the war.  He was… he was an ornithologist, that was his great love and after the… after he moved to Scotland he was involved in setting up the Nature Conservancy, which is a… a… a sort of environmental organisation to protect the environment in, in Scotland, so he was involved in, in, in setting to help up the nature conservancy, and he also worked as an ornithologist, in connection with… the outer Hebrides.  He was a kind of specialist on, on two or three islands in the Outer, Outer Hebrides, and he was, he was, he was working on a kind of text book about the ornithology of, of those two islands.’
 
`So did he travel to the islands quite a lot during…?’
 
`He… he used to go… once or twice a year, basically to do, to do counts, if you like, to do a kind of population census on, on, on, on the… on the birds, or on the island, so he actually, he would go, go fairly regularly and we sometimes went there… on, on holiday, that’s where I went in the, in the summer.’
 
`And are you interested in birds as well?’
 
`No.  Not at all [laughs].  Not at that, at that point, no.  I mean it was, it was… it was one of these situations I think where, I mean I’m the youngest of, of, of three… sons, and… one of my brothers kind of went very strongly along the lines of my father’s interest and he’s now… an ornithologist himself and has worked for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for quite a few years, and I kind of went the other way, I kind of reacted against it, and when I was a child and a teenager in particular, I was, I… I, I kind of, didn’t want to be interested in, in, in, in that kind of… activity at all.  But I mean looking back, I… I absorbed a great deal about ornithology and about wildlife in, in general just because, well partly because of, of living in the country, and partly because my, my father had a very strong interest, you know, it was his kind of dominant interest, so I think I kind of picked up an appreciation of, of, of wildlife, of nature, kind of despite myself, you know.’
 
`Right.  And you… you said you were the youngest of three brothers?’
 
`Yeah.  Yeah, I mean…’
 
`What sort of gap… age differences…?’
 
`Sorry?’
 
`What were the age differences of…?’
 
`Oh, my, my eldest brother’s, five years older than me.  My, my other brother is, is two years older than me, so… I, I was educated…privately, went to a, a prep school, went to a public school, and I was always at school with one of my brothers.  But… my eldest brother was always, had… kind of just left, and gone on, when I went to prep school he’d gone to public school, when I went to public school, he’d gone to university, but, it… it meant that Len, Len and I, my middle… middle brother went, went, you know, that we were at school…’
 
`Together?’
 
`…together, yeah.  Most… a lot, lot of the time, yeah.’
 
`And, how did you get on with, is it Len?’
 
`Well, I mean I, I think in terms, in terms of… over all, I would say that, that, that… we, we weren’t a close family, and I think that, that having three… brothers… can lead to certain… you know, to, to… kind of separation and competition and particular difficulties like that.  So I think we were… we were kind of very independent and individual in a way, but, but when we were, when we were… children, at home, we actually didn’t spend… a lot of time playing together.  We kind of… we kind of had our own particular interests and, and were, were kind of, solitary, to some extent, as children at home.  At school, I think there were difficulties for me and Len, that we were at school together.  I mean I… and, and I think that because of, partly because of the codes of… of, of prep school, and particularly public school, it, it wasn’t… it, it wasn’t a good idea, to be seen too much, with one’s older brother.’
 
`Right.’
 
`You know, particularly if one… one’s older brother was just beginning to get to a position of influence in the… in the school, or in the, in the, in the house, and becoming a prefect and you were… kind of further down the ranks, and so I think the kind of natural… inclination, our natural inclination not to have a great deal to do with each other, was kind of accentuated by the way we were educated because that… that seemed to be the best way of coping with things, and then I think it led, it led to kind of… strange re-adjustments.  I mean one of the things I remember is that at the end of… school term, we used to, because we lived not far away from the school… we, we, we would go into Perth to… on, on the day, the end of term to wait for our mum and dad to come to collect us and we would kind of have breakfast in this, this hotel while we were waiting and it was kind of like a… a re-adjustment, going on, that I have to start re-adjusting to Len, my brother, at home as opposed to Len, the person at school, who I would probably have nothing to do with, so it was like kind of almost re-negotiating a different…’
 
`Right…’
 
`….different relationship.’
 
`So you… you were at… you boarded at school?’
 
`Yeah, we boarded at school, and I, I mean I boarded from the age of… seven and a half basically, when I first went to prep school, so that was… I think looking back, that was quite a… a strange thing, but that’s the way it was and, and, and, and that’s the, the way I think the kind of class, background that I came from, and at, and at that time, in the, in the fifties, that was just kind of assumed, to be the way, the perfectly natural thing to do, but I mean I think looking back was quite strange at the age of seven, that I should be spending most, certain long periods of time away from home, and, and in actual fact, the prep school I went to was only about five miles from where we were living in StrathTay, so it was kind of a strange thing that your mum and dad are kind of over in the next valley and you only see them, for… kind of Saturdays and half Sunday, twice in a period of two and half months or something, so, I think it… I mean it, it’s part and parcel of this whole, the whole kind of, private system of education, boarding education but, but I think it, it, it, looking back on it, I, I wouldn’t… well I wouldn’t inflict it, certainly wouldn’t inflict it on anyone [laughs] that I loved… personally, but, but I mean… it, you know, it had… good aspects as well as bad but, but certainly… I mean I think one of the things, looking… looking forward to… to my kind of career, as, as a user of, of mental health services of, you know institutions and asylums, that I learnt fairly young how to survive in kind of institutions and, and, and… that may not have been a desirable [laughs] kind of skill to learn, but it was certainly kind of useful, you know…’
 
`Mmm… and your… your mother, she didn’t work did she?  Was she… a housewife or she was… lived…?’
 
`Yeah, she was, she was, she was just… a housewife, yeah.’
 
`Mmm.  And did you have many sort of hobbies or interests of your own… during… when you were a child?’
 
`Well I mean I suppose, I suppose my, my, my… my…  over, overwhelming passion, as a kid, was, was football, and, and you know, still is.  I mean I, I mean football is an extremely important part of, of, of my life and I’ve basically supported… whatever, has been my local football club, kind of from the age of seven again, and football probably was one of, was one of the major… things that I shared with, with my father.  I mean I think there were… there were… there were as I, as I said earlier, there were certain areas of his life that I didn’t really feel I was part of or want to be part of, but he was very interested in, in football, and played football as a young man, quite a lot and, you know, he introduced me to the Saints, which is St Johnstone [ph] football club in Perth, and basically that’s been my… my team ever since.  I mean, I kind of support them from afar, obviously since I moved to London I, I very rarely get to see them, but basically the Saints was my home team, and… yes, I mean I was, I was, I was… very interested in sport as, as a kid, football pre-eminently.  I wasn’t that great at sport, in terms, you know, because… a lot of the sports that were, were available, to play… I wasn’t cut out for, I wasn’t the right shape and size, for and it wasn’t until I’d got, you know, got opportunity to play things like squash or basketball or [inaudible] kind of games where, where I was more, you know, more physically cut out, and of course football wasn’t played.  I mean in… in…’
 
`Right.’
 
`…in… in, in public school… Association football, is, you know, beyond the pale.  We play rugger at, at public schools, and particularly prestigious public schools and football is something you do in your, in your spare time, kicking around on a Sunday afternoon, so I had to… had to endure five years or whatever it was of playing rugby, which is, definitely one of the games that I’m physically not cut out to play… but… and I suppose the other thing that I became interested in was, was, was… was history, I mean I think I was a fairly studious child and I used to read a great deal, and particularly when I was… a teenager, I spent a lot of time on my own, reading, history, and I was interested in archaeology as… as well.’
 
`And how was your health as a child?  Did you have any sort of serious health problems or…?’
 
`[Pause] No.  Not really.  I mean I had, I had the usual sort of childhood problems.  I had, had problems with my, my hearing, which… which were… was, was quite a problem at one stage, but that was, that was sorted, sorted out, but otherwise, no, I was, I was perfectly physically healthy.’
 
`So what happened with your hearing? [Inaudible]…’
 
`Oh, it was… I mean it was just that… that… I had, I had… well I needed to have my tonsils and adenoids out basically, which is a, quite a standard thing, but I think what, what… what happened was, that it wasn’t clear… to me, or to other people for quite a while that I had hearing problems, and, and it was only after… a period that, some of the teachers at school kind of thought that I wasn’t actually taking in what was going on, because I had hearing problems…’
 
`Mmm.  How old were you at that time… [both talking together]?’
 
`So it was kind, it was kind of… as I… looking back on it, the kind of trauma for me was, was suddenly to, to kind of be told you’ve got hearing problems, and you’ve got to have your tonsils out, without actually being aware myself that I needed, that, that I… that I had these problems.’
 
`Do you know how old were you… you were then?’
 
`How old was I?’
 
`Yeah.’
 
`About… about eight, eight or nine… when that happened, yeah, yeah.’
 
`So you, you weren’t aware that you weren’t hearing properly?’
 
`Well, no.  I… I wasn’t aware it was a problem, and it, it certainly wasn’t you know, it wasn’t… it wasn’t… a problem in as much as I didn’t go to my mother or to matron at school, or whoever, and said `Look I’ve got a problem`, it was just that some, that somebody observed I had a problem and I suddenly was told `You’ve got a problem` type of thing, so… and I mean I suppose that was the first… that was the first occasion that, that I… that I ever went to hospital.’
 
`Right.’
 
`You know… to have my tonsils and adenoids out.  But I mean it wasn’t… it wasn’t a major, it wasn’t a, a major problem or, or trauma, in, in, in, in retrospect and, and I mean, and apart from that, you know, I had no, no, no, no real health problems at all.’
 
`During your childhood, did you have any contact with people with mental health problems?  Was there anybody in the village that… had mental health problems or…?’
 
`No.  No.  I didn’t… didn’t really have, have any… any knowledge, any awareness of, of mental health problems.  I mean what, the… the… the thing I do remember is that, that… that there was… my brothers sometimes played this game with me, when I, when I was getting on their nerves about pretending to ring up the, the local asylum, which was called Murthly and… you know, `We’re ringing up Murthly and they’re going to come and take you away`, and I mean I never actually ended up in Murthly in real life, but I… but, but it, but it, it’s always… it’s something I’ve always remembered, but… that kind of game, which I’m sure lots of other children or young people play similar kind of things, that kind of… that, using that kind of bogey man kind of… figure… and, you know, I didn’t realise it was going to happen to me in reality or, or… nor did… nor did my brothers, but I think that I, I was really not aware of it at… of, of mental health problems at all, and, and… when I was at… when I was at public school, we, we had one day of the… of the week, which was a… used to do military training. Corps, it was called Corps, you know, you get… there was kind of army, there was an army section and a navy section, and an RAF section and a fire… fire brigade section and one of the ways you could get out of doing, being involved in any of those sections was to go into Perth, and do social work I suppose, and, and at that point, I mean, you know, I was sixteen or seventeen even, the idea of actually going and working with people with problems, was kind of horrific to me, although I… and, and although I really hated, these other activities, they were more… desirable, less, less of a threat to me than the possibility of, of, of avoiding them and going, going into Perth and doing social work with people with problems, so…’
 
`So when your brothers were threatening you with being…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…taken away, what… I mean as a… looking back, what was your impression as a child of you know, an asylum or what… did you have an… did you have an idea of what, what the… what the threat was?’
 
`[Pause] Well I mean I think it’s very difficult to, to say now, I… looking back because I think I’ve acquired kind of ideas about asylum and about Murthly through having actually been to visit people in, in, in Murthly . But I mean I think what I, what, what, what… what I was probably, in my mind, would be… kind of grim, tall, Victorian type buildings, and kind of solitary, stooping men and women kind of walking around, walk, walking around in, in… acres of space.  I mean I think that was, that was my kind of thing, and, and, and rules, because I’d… well I think at that, at that stage they probably, the only actual contact site I’d had of this place, Murthly was driving past on the way to Perth, ‘cause it’s… it’s not far from Perth, where we used to go, regularly… with, with these walls, you know, high walls, so I suppose there is a… that high walls, kind of grim institutional buildings and kind of lonely, lost… damaged people.  Yeah… [laughs] that sort of thing.’
 
`And… just thinking about your sort of school career, I mean I… you said earlier that there were some good aspects and there were some bad aspects, could… could you just explain a little more about that?’
 
`Well I mean, I mean I think the good aspects were that I, I really enjoyed it, at, at the time, I mean both at prep school and particularly you know, at public school from thirteen to, to seventeen, that, that I actually enjoyed it, and… I mean I did well, academically.  I mean, I studied hard, I was successful, you know, I got good exam results, and… I… I fitted in, socially, which I think was important, because I… you know, my home, home environment, as I said, was fairly isolated and you know not very social, but I kind of fitted in to my peer group at, at, at, at, at… public school, and… there were these crazy things, these rules and regulations and ways, you know, ways of doing things and traditions and cultures associated with that particular public school and with all public schools, which I think looking back, seem terrible, to an extent, but at the time, I didn’t rebel very greatly and, and although there were some things that I think I found hard and, and strange at the time, by and large I didn’t, and I think looking back, all this was, this was, this was kind of in me, in the early sixties and, and, you know the… the era of the, The Beatles and, and, and you know independent radio stations and kind of the, the rebellious culture.  In actual fact what’s surprising is how, how kind of puny, our, our, our rebel… rebelliousness actually was, you know…’
 
`Mmm’
 
`…which, which was kind of… basically limited to… playing, playing the radio too, too loud and singing Rolling Stones lyrics in the changing rooms, type of thing, you know.’
 
`So you were sort of aware of the sort of… what was going on in the sixties?’
 
`Yes, I mean aware, aware… largely through, through, through, through the radio, and, and then through television, I mean up, up until a certain point, I didn’t have television at home because, we, we lived in the mountains, and until they built kind of… aerial… you know aerial masts, couldn’t get television signals, but yes, basically I was aware of what was going on.  I wasn’t participating in it really, but, but, but things like, like pop music obviously was extremely important and listening to the kind of independent radio stations like radio Scotland, which was kind of a first sort of pirate radio station… all those sort of things were important but, but I didn’t really participate in that because… except on one or two occasions when I stayed with friends in places like Glasgow, was pretty… pretty… pretty much not connected, to kind of… urban activities of any kind.’
 
`Right. So you… left, well you would have left school at what age?’
 
`I left school at, seventeen…’
 
`And you were… and, and did you go to university or…?’
 
`Yeah.’
 
`Right.’
 
`I mean I sat my A levels, and I got… I applied for Cambridge, which was… where my father and my eldest brother had gone, and so, and it was kind of, you know that’s what… that’s what…’
 
`Right…’
 
`…the Campbell’s did, applied…’
 
`Right.’
 
`… and went to Cambridge.’
 
`Where did your… the middle brother go, or what did he do?’
 
`Well he went, he went to, to Aberdeen University, which was considered a terrible [laughs] kind of tragedy in a way in the family.  `Oh he hasn’t made it to Cambridge`, and ironically he then went on to, you know, to get a PhD, and… so, in a way he succeeded much, academically, far more than either John, my eldest brother, or myself, and… but anyway I, I… I got a place in, in… at, at Cambridge University, Jesus College, Cambridge, based on my A levels and an interview and the school then wanted me to sit… the scholarship exam, which I did, and got a minor scholarship, and less… left just before Christmas, and then went down to university… the following October and… and that’s kind of where my, my career in the, in the… in the psychiatric system began basically, when, when I went down to university… and I think, what happened was that basically I… I panicked that, that… I, I… the way I’d been brought up, the way I’d been educated, and living in a kind of isolated rural environment, I just wasn’t prepared, for some of the… the kind of challenges of, of going to university and, and in particular I was kind of socially extremely naïve.  I mean I had very, very little contact with, with women, at that point because of being brought up in a single sex… but educated in a single sex environment, you know… three, three brothers living at home and… and basically I just… had high expectations that somehow I was going to make it, that this was you know, I was going to kind of… this was going to be… I was going to make tremendous… be a tremendous… success, academically and socially, and this was kind of moving into my adult life, type of thing, moving on, and… it, it was… didn’t work, and I, I’d panicked in the, within the first few days of arriving at university and basically, that panic wasn’t controllable, by sort of… the Chaplain talking to me and trying to introduce me to one or two friendly students who kind of helped me through and you know, talked me down, all that kind of thing, and I ended up in an annexe of Adenbrook’s hospital, being given barbiturates, to kind of calm me down.  Barbiturates was what… were what they used… used in… still in those days and… it was decided, I mean I didn’t decide, I wasn’t really in, in any shape to decide, but it was decided that I should go back to Scotland, that I should kind of miss out the… a year at university and I should go… go… be transferred back to Scotland to sort myself out in a psychiatric hospital and come back the following year, and… I remember my… my mother and father came down, basically to take me back, and… at this point, they suddenly realised that I’m allergic to barbiturates and... my joints cease up, I can’t move my… arms and legs, and so I had to be taken back to Scotland on a stretcher basically, driven from Cambridge to London, in an ambulance and then put on the over night sleeper train and taken… and, and… sent back to Dundee, where I was going to go into… hospital there, and I remember… my mum kind of sitting, sitting up with me all night to give me medication, part, part of which was the antidote to the barbiturates and part of it, part of which were some other kind of tranquilliser to keep me calmed down and we arrived in Dundee, railway station, early in the morning, six o’clock or something in the morning and I remember lying on this stretcher on the platform, waiting for the… for the… for the ambulance, from… the, the psychiatric hospital, Royal Dundee Liff hospital, to come and collect me, and then I was kind of delivered to… hospital, and that was my first admission, and, and, and it was all sort of… and I was there for about… I suppose, about three months, and that, in some ways was my first encounter with, with adult life, is this, you know, this was… rather than kind of making it big down in the university, here I was kind of, learning about life, adult life, in, in the admission ward, Gowrie, Gowrie House, in, in Royal Dundee Liff Hospital, and so you know, that was quite, quite, quite a shock for me.’
 
`So how many… just going back a bit, how… how long did you actually… were you actually in Cambridge?’
 
`Well at that point, I mean I would… a period of days, three or four days, I mean I actually… had, had… broke down, if you like, before the term even started, so it was within the first three or four days, so it was just… it was kind of really a… a… a panic, reaction and, and it was described in terms of diagnosis at the time, that I was, I… I was suffering from an acute anxiety… neurosis, I think it was, it was called, and I was just kind of distracted, with, with, with anxiety, that I… that, that I… I couldn’t make it, I wouldn’t make it, and that basically my life was over, and one of the… one of the… one, one of the funny things was, when I arrived at the Royal Dundee Liff and was kind of taken upstairs into the admission ward, the admission ward was being redecorated and there was no… paint on the walls, and all the… all the sockets, the, the wires were just hanging out of the sockets, and I was kind of put on this bed and looked around and I thought God, you know what have I… this is it, you know, I’ve been dumped, this is the kind of… the pit into which I’d been dumped, which is what I was feeling psychologically and it wasn’t for a while that I sort… I realised I… now this, this is… this is because they’re redecorating the ward.  But, but anyway, that's… now that’s how I, I… I ended up there.  And, I mean, I… I mean I think that… the thing about Dundee Liff… to me, was it was… it, it was quite a learning… a learning experience for me.  I mean the ward that I was on… there were quite a lot of… people with epilepsy on the ward and, and so that I kind of encountered for the first time, people having epileptic fits, which was quite a regular occurrence.  There were also a lot, a high number of the people were… were, had… had alcohol problems and, and so there, there, there were… there was quite a lot of… disruption with people being drunk and, and, and kind of violent and things like that, so certainly it was an eye opener for someone like me, coming from an upper middle class background, to suddenly go into this ward, which was basically serving Dundee, with a lot of kind of working class people, with, with different lifestyles, all together from  me.  The other thing is, was… looking back, is that, it was a segregated environment.  I mean the wards were segregated, the… when we went down to meal times, the men and the women went down at slightly different times and we used to queue up on a different side of this kind of canteen hall, and, and… it was kind of a very brave person who actually went and sat with a member of the, the… the opposite sex, so it was… it was… it, it… it was… it was different from the type of, kind of routine that, that you… you would get nowadays.  The other, the other thing that I remember was… that the ward round took place… in the dormitories, so that on the day that the consultant was going to come round, we all kind of got up and we had to get everything tidy and tidy our… our dormitory and, and… square everything off on our beds and our, our cupboards and everything, and then we would stand, at the bottom… foot of our beds, and the consultant and the senior registrar and charge nurse would kind of come round, procession to the different rooms, in, in, in the ward, and would kind of interview you at the bottom of your bed and in the presence of the other people, four or five other people who were in that particular dormitory.  [Pause] So… that, that was quite different from the multidisciplinary ward round… that, you know most people are now… would now experience.’
 
`Mmm.  And how often was the ward round?’
 
`Oh once… once a… once a, a week basically, and, and… I mean I did… did have the opportunity to… to speak to the senior registrar as well in, in… in kind of in a… in a consulting room session. Didn’t see much of the, of… of the consultant, which… well I suppose not, not surprising… and I mean at that stage, I hadn’t got a diagnosis.  I mean this was before, you know, before I, I kind of… I’d been given a diagnosis, and so basically I, I was… I was just suffering from anxiety type of problems.’
 
`And were you a voluntary… were you a voluntary patient?’
 
`I was a voluntary patient, yes, yes I was voluntary, and… I mean I was given a sort of… an interpretation of what was going on, in my life, which was, which… was a kind of… I suppose a standard… Freudian kind of interpretation.  You know, too close to mother, too… you know, distant from father, all this type of thing and, my relationship with my mother was, was, was supposed to be, you know, the big problem… and I think that was extremely unhelpful… I mean in retrospect that kind of analysis actually didn’t help, ‘cause it kind of… it kind of sets the pattern for… you know subsequent analyses by subsequent psychiatrists, kind of reading the notes so to speak, and, and, and I don’t think, whether it was true or not, is one thing.  Whether it’s helpful, it certainly wasn’t, and, and… but I also was given, given intelligence… tests, because they were… they were trying to establish whether or not I was capable of going back to Cambridge and… unfortunately the consultant decided to, to tell me that I wasn’t intelligent enough to go back to Cambridge, which was kind of like the, the one thing that I knew at a time when my world had… was falling apart, but I was certainly intelligent enough to go back to Cambridge.  I mean there were loads of other reasons why I probably shouldn’t have gone back to Cambridge, but he didn’t, he chose the wrong reason that certainly wasn’t true.  I mean if he’d said to me, you know, why don’t you go to some other university because you’d be, you know in a more balanced environment, less demanding, all that kind of thing… So anyway, that…  I mean he kind of ensured that I was going to go back to Cambridge and keep on trying to go back to Cambridge, whether it was the right thing, thing, thing or not… but… I don’t know.’
 
`Were you one of the younger patients there?’
 
`Yes.  There was one… there was one, I mean about half way through my stay, a younger… a younger patient did arrive, but basically most of the time I was the youngest, and I mean the… the… the other patients were extremely kind and supportive to me, and two or three of them kind of befriended me and, and it was, it was ok.  I mean it was, it was… it was… umm… it’s… it’s one of my stays in, in… in psychiatric hospital that, that I look, look back on without any particular anger, anger or you know or, or… or… or… horror or anything, I mean basically it, it was a reasonable experience, and, and, and I kind of learnt quite a lot… umm… I mean I think it, I think it… what it, what it did to me partly, was make me feel that I was different, that this experience has made me different, and whether that was a good thing or not, I’m not sure, but I mean I don’t… I don’t think that, that you know I don’t think that you can… any, anybody at the age seventeen who’s spent three or four months in a psychiatric hospital, can go away without feeling oh, I’m slightly different from other seventeen year olds… I was always… as a result of this.  I mean the other thing that I remember, is, is… being introduced to… the concept of electro-convulsive therapy, ECT, that within, within two or three days of arriving, on the ward, one of the other patients had explained to me, what ECT was, and how… and, and kind of put forward you know, this kind of possibility that that may be on the menu, at some point, and, and of course, I started worrying about ECT, although there was no chance whatever at that point, of me being given ECT, but I mean I think that, that, that, that that was, was an illustration of the way ECT seeps into the culture and consciousness of, of, of psychiatric ward and is, and is the kind… again, is a kind of bogey man that people start to worry about, you know, and, and, and that it, so it, it, it performs a kind of controlling function, even, even at that level.’
 
`Mmm.’
 
`And the other thing, the other thing I, I remember, was going up to… the main hospital, because the unit I was on was slightly separate from the main hospital and we went up to the main hospital, for occupational therapy, and going up on one occasion to do a… an art session, and talking to some of the people on the ward beforehand, saying I’m going up to do an art session and this, this, this bloke saying, `Don’t… don’t use too much yellow, ‘cause yellow is a schizophrenic colour`, [laughs] but you know, that if you used too much yellow then you’re going, going to be diagnosed as being [laughs] schizophrenic, so… I’ve, I’ve always remembered that, and I, I don’t know whether there’s any truth in, in… in that, in that, but…’
 
`So what treatments did you… did you receive?’
 
`Medication. Basically.  And… minor tranquillisers, and, and I think… a few, a certain amount of major tranquillisers.  I think probably I was… I can’t remember exactly but I think that’s… I was probably put on Chlorpromazine, at that point, but not, not very heavy, heavy, heavy dose, and… sleeping drugs.  Chloral, which, you know the kind of knock out drops, Chloral Hydrate.  I remember, I did have problems sleeping and I would be given some medication, to help me sleep, at ten o’clock and then there was thing about… do you get up, and worry that the staff… the… the night nurse, to get some Chloral, and you have to judge it right because they won’t give you Chloral after a certain time, so if you wait until after one o’clock, you might be all right.  If you wait ‘till two o’clock, they’re going to say they can’t give you Chloral.  But Chloral was, was… was the knock out thing, I mean it, you know, it was… the sort of thing that people… I mean some people were on Chloral… by prescription but I mean for me it was a kind of… and I’d get the chance of Chloral if you know I couldn’t sleep… I couldn’t sleep… and, interviews with the other treatment was basically an interview with, with the… with the registrar, sort of, to try and get a… get a… get an account of my life and occupational therapy, which was fairly, fairly standard occupational therapy.  I mean… mostly things like… you know baskets, basket weaving and, and mosaics and… and, and, weaving footstools and things like that, rather than group… there, there wasn’t very much group… discussion.  But I mean the, the… the, the occupational therapists were, were extremely kind, as, as were most of the, of the… of the staff I came in, into contact with, I mean there wasn’t… so…’
 
`What sort of building was it?  Can you describe the building?’
 
`[Pause] I mean it was a… it, it was a kind of standard Victorian… asylum… and, and… Gowrie House, which was where the admission unit was, was slightly separate from, from the main, the main hospital.  The main hospital itself was fairly compact, it didn’t have, have, have a huge long… corridor, and, you know, didn’t have villas.  There were one or two outlying buildings, but, but basically it was, it was… it was a fairly com… compact building, kind of looking, looking down towards the… the Tay Estuary, and… very much like… a number of, of, of the places that, that I’d been in.  I mean I… I hardly went into the main hospital at all…’
 
`And that was the main psychiatric… it was a big psychiatric place [both talking together] [inaudible]…’
 
`Yes, it was a psychiatric hospital, but, but… there was no reason to go into the main hospital, the main building.  I can’t remember, I don’t think there was a, there was a… a kind of, patients… canteen… building at, at that time, I mean I’ve been back to, to… to Liff since then, and there is now, but I think at the time I was there, there was no actual kind of, kind of patient centre or canteen, so basically, I mean we… it was… it was a kind of, a question of, of commuting between the [mobile phone rings in background]…’
 
`[Whispers] Sorry…’
 
`Ok… commuting between the, the admission unit and the occupational therapy unit, which was kind of up, adjacent to the main, main building, and then… as, as I, as I got… more, more kind of settled, I used to go down to Dundee, which was I suppose about two or three miles away and there was a… a bus that used to go down to the centre of Dundee, I used to go down there, in the afternoons and, and, and kind of go to the cinema and, wander around and then go to… the kind of, little café, and have, have high tea, as they do in Scotland, and kind of jump on a bus and go back, and that was kind of part of… part of my rehabilitation, I mean that was a significant sign that I was, you know, I was, I was… getting better and…’
 
`So did the feelings of panic that you were describing earlier, they… did they recede?’
 
`Yes, yeah.  I mean they, they, they… they went, fairly, fairly quickly… well I mean within a couple of weeks or so and I, and I think that, that, that… I think that I… I kind of moved into, into a kind of fairly stunned sort of condition… after, after, after that and, and… yeah.  I mean I remember initially when I went to… was in, in… Gowrie House that… my concentration was zero and I, and I, and I couldn’t watch television because I couldn’t make sense of the… the kind of intercutting on, on, on the television, but I just… you know, but I just didn’t have the… the concentration to hold and I… to hold the kind of thread, between a sequence of… of edited film, and that was quite frightening, because you kind of think well what, what’s going on here, have I lost my, you know, my capacities, but it’s just really a question of… of not being able to concentrate, where you can’t actually hold, you know you can’t actually make the link between you know when it cut from one scene to another, if your concentration can’t hold the kind of, the thread, you think well what, what’s this, it’s totally meaningless and it can be quite scary, so that, that sort of thing happened to me in, in the first few… few days, but I, I think after about a week or ten days certainly that had gone and…’
 
`Did your parents… did your parents come and visit you?’
 
`Yes, yeah.  I, I, I had fairly kind of regular visits from, from my parents I think about twice a week.  I, I mean the… Dundee’s about twenty miles from where, where we lived, and then, later on, I went home for weekends and it was… yeah, it was… it was all kind of fairly, fairly under… undramatic looking, looking back, and, and… and at that point, no… no real suggestion, certainly no suggestion to me that there was a major problem here…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`You know that this would… that this was basically about some kind of… reaction, over reaction, to… going to university and, and that… what, what needed to happen was to… was to prepare more carefully for returning to university, and, and, and, you know, hopefully that would be it.’
 
`Did your father, because he was… formerly worked as a doctor…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Did he have any… I mean was there, do you think there was any difference in his attitude from what it might have been, being a sort of medical person?’
 
`No, I mean I think my father’s… my father’s… [pause] approach, as far as I was aware was very… was very physical… physically orientated.  I mean I don’t think that, that he… that he had a great understanding or belief in psychological theories, and I think he probably wasn’t very, very familiar with… mental illness, as a phenomenon.  I mean I think his, his, his, his… approach, as a doctor, as… as far as I could see, was… was very much a sort of healthy living, you know that, that, that… you know if you look after yourself, drink plenty of liquids, that kind of approach, I think when, when suddenly I started to… develop… mental problems, I think in a way that, that, that, that he wasn’t comfortable or familiar with that, and less so than with my eldest brother who, who had developed severe problems with diabetes, when he was a teenager, and I think in a way, or this is certainly my fantasy, that, that, that my father was kind of more at ease with, with one… my eldest brother having diabetes, than with me having mental health problems, ‘cause simply it was, it was a world that he, you know, he… he was more familiar with…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`…physical kind of… disorders rather than, than mental ones.’
 
`Ok.  Shall we just leave it there and just change… or do you think…?’
 
[End of DVC Pro Tape 1 – VHS Tape 1 continues]


[Start of DVC Pro Tape 2 – VHS Tape 1 continues]
 
`What’s that about your father being a… also being a doctor, do you think you were treated in a different way by the hospital, because...?’
 
`No, no.  I don’t think so, at all.  [Pause].  I think that… [pause] by and large, throughout my, thirty… thirty years or more of using services, I don’t think that my… loved ones and relatives have, have been privileged in any way whatsoever.  I, I don’t think, I mean… I, I’d be hard pressed to, to give an example of where any mental health professional has actually have gone out of their way to sort of, you know…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
 `…listen to or, or, or… you know, support… my, my relatives.  I mean that’s not to say that they’ve been totally ignored, but I don’t think there’s… you know, anybody has, has, has made any particular efforts at any point…’
 
`And… and you were saying earlier about what an eye opener it was for somebody…’
 
`Yeah…;
 
`…of your class to be… could you… to, to be put in a hospital.  I mean was that sort of… I don’t know, was that the sort of normal thing that would happen to somebody in your sort of part of society to be in a… to be put into a… an NHS hospital?  I mean did you think about that or…?’
 
`Sorry, could you say the…?’
 
`Oh sorry, I mean did…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…did you, I mean I suppose what, what I want to sort of know more about being put into a general hospital with people of I don’t know, middle class and working class people and, had you had more… was it the first time that you’d had contact with working class people?’
 
`Yeah.  [Pause] I mean I think it’s… it… [pause] I think it’s partly that it was because it was, it was the first time I’d had contact with working class people, but I think more important, it was the fact that in actual fact it was the first time I’d had any sustained contact with… any, adults, outside my family circle.  I mean you know I, I just hadn’t spent time with, with, with, you know at the age of seventeen, you know, I hadn’t spent time or, or talked at any length to… to, to, to adults, who weren’t, you know, who weren’t involved in my education.  So it was partly, it was just a world, it’s not just the fact that it was, it’s not just the fact that it would… that it happened to be, the world happened to be people with, with… people who were working class, it’s that the world with people like adults… that I didn’t you know, that weren’t connected with  me already, and, and on top of that, obviously the fact that it was a… that it was a, that the world was a… a mental hospital ward, you know made it, made it… added, added a kind of… whole other layers of, of, of meaning if you like, so… [pause].  But I think it’s just… I think it was just a… a… an unusual way [laughs] to actually be introduced to the adult world…’
 
`Mmm.  Yeah, very, I mean an unusual way to sort of do that part of your growing up kind of thing or sort of I don’t know, that sort of introduction…’
 
`I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.’
 
`Sorry…’
 
`It’s ok…’
 
`Sort of, it was a… yeah, I was just agreeing with you really, yeah…’
 
`Yeah.  Yeah.’
 
`So… I mean is there anything more you can remember about, or that stands out about that admission, that period?’
 
`No, not… not, not really.   I mean I… I mean as I said to you, I think it was a fairly… it was a fairly… un… unproblematic, admission apart from the fact that it was the first admission, and, and the actual circumstances of, of kind of arriving there, but I think that, that, that… that once I’d been there for… a few days, things, things, things went fairly… fairly smoothly and there wasn’t, you know, there weren’t… there weren’t any… big, big dramas going on with me or, or with other people in the ward in general.’
 
`Could you describe what… the events leading up to your being discharged?’
 
`I can’t remember… to be honest with you, really.  I mean I, I think that, that, that… that, it… it was… it was assumed that I was going to go back, and stay with my family, and, and… after a period of… time, when I actually spent more time at home, on weekends, they just kind of… it, it just kind of naturally, naturally happened.  I mean I wasn’t… I don’t think I was prepared… in, in any particular way, for… for, for discharge, and… basically, I was… I was kind of… discharged before, before Christmas, and I think that was the target, was to get me dis… discharged, around about Christmas and that was it.  Yeah…’
 
`Right.  So then you spent Christmas at, at home presumably?’
 
`I certainly… I certainly spent Christmas at home.  I… I, I can’t remember whether I was actually discharged before Christmas or, or shortly after Christmas, but, but certainly, it… it was round about that time, that I was discharged.’
 
`Ok, and then you were determined to go back to Cambridge…?’
 
`I was… I was determined to go back to Cambridge and it was, it was kind of decided that, that I should go… to… what they called the long vacation term, which is a, a term, that occurs in the middle of the… the summer holidays, at, at Cambridge, when people can do extra study, and so I was going to go down to settle in during that period, when there was no pressure, and then hopefully you know, when the term started in the autumn, I… I would… I, I would… be ok.  I… after, after I came out of Dundee Liff I was… I spent some time working in a, in a hotel, on, on, on the ski slopes near, not far from where… where we lived, and then… after that in the, in the summer, I went to work at a… a youth hostel, warden, assistant youth hostel warden in, in Shrewsbury, and that, and then after that, I went, I went to… went back to Cambridge for this long, long vacation term, so… that was…’
 
`Right…’
 
`That was…’
 
`I see, so were you… did you spend a whole year… how many months did you… between leaving Cambridge and then coming back?’
 
`Well it was… it was a year, it… it was a… I mean before… setting aside the, long vacation term, yeah, I mean I kind of broke, broke down, in October and I went back the next…’
 
`Right...’
 
`…October.’
 
`And were you… by that time were you, you feeling better prepared?’
 
`Well I was and I wasn’t in actual fact.  I mean I was better prepared to some extent, but having said that, I actually, I actually almost… blew it again, and I… I… I’d got very agitated and… my… mother and father had to come down from Scotland and I was basically kind of told, `If you don’t get your act together, pretty quickly… that may be it, you know, you’ll be asked to leave, and, and basically that’s… that’s… that will be the end of your career at Cambridge, and so I got my act together, and I kind of held it together through, through the… through most of that first term and then things, things got, got better, the rest of that year and the following year, and at the end of the second year, I sat the first part of my… my degree…’
 
`What were you studying?’
 
`History.  And… and did very well.  Unfortunately, I… I got involved, during this, that period in the Simon Community which is… you know, works with, with… what used to be called down and outs, homeless people on the streets, people with drink, drugs problems and they… they had a, had a kind of shelter and a house in, in Cambridge and I was involved in… in working as a volunteer in that, and in the… in the holidays after I’d sat my exams at the end of the two years, I, I was working in, in, in the, in the… in the house, and… things didn’t work out in terms of, the leader of the community left and basically I got landed, with, with being the only person around, who could run the community, and it, I really… and I couldn’t hold it together and so that was the, the origins of my, my next kind of breakdown, and I went down to… well it was decided that I should go home to Scotland for a rest, before term started again in October, and I went… I got… kind of lost… in London, because I was starting to, to lose… lose touch with reality, and I thought various things were happening, that weren’t happening, and as a result of that, I kind of got lost, on, on route to Euston to go back to Scotland and I got, was rescued by my elder brother, John, who… who lived just outside London and… after a couple of days at his place when I was getting more and more distressed I ended up on a kind of emergency admission in, in St Bernard’s, Southall, and… was then transferred from St Bernard’s, to… Murray Royal Hospital in, in Perth, and that was kind of my next major admission, and again… it was decided that I would be given another year’s grace to complete my… final year of my degree, come back again next year… and so I was in my… Murray Royal second major admission, and, Mae, Murray Royal is a… extremely unusual hospital, certainly in my experience, in, in… in some… it’s an NHS hospital, in some ways, it’s a bit like a… a stately home.  I mean, or certainly it, it was in those days, got very, very well, well furnished, carpets on the floor, in the, in the kind of admission… in, in the, you know, in, on the ward, and, and kind of if you were in a side room, it was, you know there was nice furniture and chairs and things, and… and quite a small, psychiatric hospital, and… and I never… I’d never come across anything like that be… before, but, but in some ways it was a bit like, like a private hospital… and… [pause] well if I’d… I mean, the… the first thing that happened to me, the most important thing I suppose that happened in some ways, was that I was diagnosed as suffering from manic depressive psychosis, so… that, that was a… that was obviously influential on my future, but up, up until then I hadn’t, you know, I hadn’t got a diagnosis.’
 
`This experience that you… when you got lost in, in London…’
 
`Yeah.’
 
`Was that different from the previous sort of panic…?’
 
`Yes.’
 
`…of the stay, it was…?’
 
`Yes.’
 
`…and what sort of things were you imagining, or thinking about?’
 
`Well I think they were… they were… umm… probably be described as, as, as paranoid fantasies, but it, it was to… it was to do with, with… being a… being a secret agent and, and, and kind of conspiracies going on and… I had to… discard various aspects of my identity so that I, I… I had a signet ring, with, with, with my kind of clan… symbol on it, and I kind of threw that away, and I threw my watch away and I threw my spectacles away and… so there were… there were, there were, yeah, I, there was… there… that sort of… kind of… unusual… ideas or, or, or drama that I was, that I was kind of playing out, and then I think that… by… that, that by the time I was rescued by my brother, I was getting into a sort of… a… a… a Christian religious kind of thing about… being, either being Jesus Christ or a kind of, an agent of Jesus Christ and needing to do things and needing, needing to go out and see, see the baby Jesus and all that kind of thing, so… so yes, I mean this, this was the first occasion that I’d kind of, in, in, in psychiatrists Lainguage, that I’d kind of displayed psychotic symptoms, so, so… yeah, so that… that was it.’
 
`And how did your… you say your brother rescued you, did you make contact with him?’
 
`Yeah, I mean I made… when I lost… when, when I, when I missed the train to, to go, go to… go to… back to Scotland, I rang him up and said, `Could you meet me somewhere in the West End?`, I think Piccadilly Circus or something, at such and such a time, and… apparently, I wasn’t there, and he was, he was extremely worried, and he’d just… he’d kind of hung around looking for me, and, and I was in the vicinity, and he, luckily he found me… so, I mean I think… I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t found me, I mean I think I would, ultimately I would have been picked up or, or, or… the Police would have been called and I would have ended up in, in… in some other psychiatric hospital, in, in, in a… central London.  But, but it… but yeah, so I… but I was, I mean it… I was, the first few days, I was… I, I was… fairly all over the place, and I remember trying to run away from… from St Bernard’s before they transferred me back… trying to run away, and I, and I… and… I had a… kind of obsessions about time, about having to be in certain places, at certain times, and I used… was walking round the ward, you know, and I must be standing outside the, the toilet area when the clock, you know clock is, points to ten o’clock at that way, that kind of thing and, and then I’d try, and then I was trying to run away and they brought me back, and then they transferred me back, as I say, to, to… Murray Royal, and I ended up… I, I mean Murray Royal was extreme… got very, very good, treatment, and, and… it in some ways… the, the best kind of quality of… of, of… of treatment that I, that I ever, have ever received in the psychiatric system, and I, and I think that was partly because, because… the particular nature of the hospital, I think it was partly because it was a rural hospital.  I mean Perth is a kind of… a country town type, and it’s, and it’s in the middle of a rural area, it’s different from Dundee which was an industrial city, and, and so the pressures, were different and I, and I think the quality of the nursing staff, was also better, perhaps because of the status of nursing, mental health nursing, in, in a rural area, at, at that time, and we’re talking about the seventies, it was different, and, and, and higher than it is now, and, and, and so… it was… it, it wasn’t a traumatic time, for, for me… really.’
 
`What did you feel about being diagnosed?  How did that…how did that affect you?’
 
`Well, when I think at that point, that I was, I was… I was grateful and I’d accepted the diagnosis, and… I think, the… the crucial thing was that my consultant was a very good man.  I mean he was a good consultant but he was also a good person and I mean he was a forensic… consultant, and he only had one or two patients in, in Murray Royal, of whom I was one, and, and he… he actually treated me with a great deal of respect and dignity.  I mean he was a sort of person that, he only came to the hospital one day a week, but if he said to me, `I’m going to see you… when I come`, he would see me, even if it meant eight o’clock, in the evening, so he was the sort of person that wouldn’t, you know, let you down, in that kind of basic way and, and, and you know that’s, that’s all too… all too rare, I think, with, with, with, with psychiatrists and other mental health workers, is, is that if they met, they either don’t make commitments, `I’m going to meet you…`, or, `I’m not going to meet you…`, but all that, when they do make commitments, they don’t necessarily keep them, but he was a man of his word if you like, and he was, he, he, he, he talked to me… quite a lot, and he put forward this hypothesis, `This is what you’re suffering from, manic depression psychosis…`, and this is why I say it is, and… it was useful to me to have a diagnosis, and because he was a credible person that I respected, I accepted it, at that point.  And… and, and… [pause], the big, the big… the big… problem… for me, in, in, in, in connection with Murray, Murray Royal was, that my father died, at that point, at the, the, the…’
 
`While you were in hospital?’
 
`Well, I, I’d just been discharged, again, I was just discharged just before Christmas… 1970 I think…’
 
`And how long had you been in Murray Royal?’
 
`Well I’d been, again I’d been in, been in there since… September time, from September ‘till… ‘till December.  I came out and I went back to work in the hotel, that I’d been working in, before, on the ski slopes, but then my father died suddenly over new year, and as a result of that, I basically… catapulted myself back into hospital… and… I was in hospital for, for a further couple of months, and… then… what happened was that my mother… got very severely depressed, partly as a result of my father’s death, and they said, `We’re going to admit her to Murray Royal`, and… I just couldn’t take…’
 
`You were there at the time? [Both talking together]’
 
`The idea of being… yes, I was still there…’
 
`Right.’
 
`And, and I… the idea of being… being on… on the next door ward, to my mother, was just something I, I, I, I… I couldn’t… contemplate, so basically I went to the psychiatrist and I said, `Look you’ve got to discharge me, I’ve got to go` and so he did, you know I mean I was… ‘cause I wasn’t in, in, in that bad shape by then, but then what happened was that I was… my mother was in for a short period and then they decided that she would be given ECT, and I, I was… living at home, on the farm, on my own… and then my mum came back, and I ended up having to drive her into… into Perth, to have these kind of outpatient ECT sessions, and that was within you know, a few weeks of being discharged myself, and so I mean looking back, that was an extremely grim time… well… I mean I was having to look after my mum, who was in bad shape, and I wasn’t in great shape myself, and I was on my own in this isolated… farm, with my mum.’
 
`Mmm.’
 
`And… and in a way that was the… that was, that was the end of my… my life in Scotland, because shortly thereafter, my mother moved down, to the London area, and the farm was sold and… I basically was exiled, from Scotland, so it was a bit… but it was a very… in, in some ways it was a very… traumatic end, certainly a very sad and negative end of my kind of… life in Scotland, and… but as far as Murray Royal was concerned, I mean I… I, I, I, I… I, I… I, I feel quite positive, about the… about what happened, the way, the way they looked after me, in, in Murray Royal.’
 
`Were you also prescribed medication at Murray Royal?’
 
`Yeah.  Yes, I was… I was, I was… I was still on… on, on Chlorpromazine, basically, because although, although I was given a diagnosis of manic depression, they didn’t put me on Lithium, although Lithium was available at that point… and… [pause] I got the… got the Chlorpromazine burns, that was… that’s when I first encountered the Chlorpromazine, you know the… the photosensitivity number, because they never told me about it, at Murray Royal, and we used to play clock golf.  There was a kind of, kind of clock golf course just outside the admission unit, at Murray Royal…’
 
`Clock golf?  What… what’s that?  Is that mini golf is it?’
 
`It’s like mini golf, yeah, mini golf, yeah, that’s, that’s right, mini golf… and we used to spend quite a lot of time out there playing, playing it, in the sunshine, and I got these terrible, you know, these terrible burns, and… it was very, very severe… very severe and, and… [pause].  But… I kind of… yeah, you get used to it.  I mean you work round it, if you know about it, the problem is, you know, obviously if you’re… out in the burning sun for a, for a day, and you don’t realise what it is, by the time you come in, you’re in… you’re in quite bad shape.’
 
`Mmm.’
 
`But…’
 
`What did you think about them not telling you, I mean what did you think was happening?’
 
`Sorry?’
 
`What did you think was happening, when I mean, when you first got burnt, and you had…?’
 
`I can’t remember.’
 
`Did no…’
 
`I mean I certainly didn’t… I, I… I, I don’t… I didn’t put, didn’t make a connection, didn’t make a connection.’
 
`And nobody, staff, nor patients, warned you?’
 
`Well, I mean, I mean I, I remember, in, in the end that the staff did… did tell me… about it and, and… I started wearing some of that… some of the cream, the barrier, the barrier cream, but, but initially, I mean I think probably initially I didn’t tell, I didn’t tell anybody and it wasn’t noticed, I just… I just endured it, I didn’t realise what it was.  But, you know… [pause] I mean certainly the staff were… were… were aware of it, it’s not that they didn’t know, know about it, but it’s part… I think it was more likely I didn’t actually say, what, what, what it was.’
 
`So what was your… what were your days like at Murray Royal?’
 
`[Pause] Umm… we… we got up [laughs], we… we had, we had breakfast.  One of the things about Murray Royal was that I… I, I… ended up weighing about fourteen stone, which is incredible, you know, it’s about three stone, two and a half stone more than what… you know, that I… I’ve ever weighed at any other time, but there was just huge amounts of food.  I mean it’s probably partly the medication as well, but… but that, that hasn’t usually… affected me at other times, but I mean I used to have three plates of porridge, for breakfast, so there was, there was a vast amount of food.  The other thing was that at Murray Royal in the evenings, after they’d given out the medication, or just before, round about medication time, ten, tennish… we, we had all this buttered toast, which the staff would make for us, kind of… kind of little thin bits of, of hot buttered toast, and, and, and drinks, and we would kind of sit in the day room and the staff would bring this out and we’d all sit round and eat it, so… the food was good.  I ate a lot of it… so got up, food, the, the usual story, you know you, you hang around between half past eight and, and, and ten o’clock or half past nine or ten, go down to occupational therapy, which was very basic at, at Murray Royal, it was very… it was, it was… there was a very kind, very kind of old fashioned occupational therapist in, in charge of the main occupational therapy, and it was mainly you know things I’ve indicated that we did at Royal Dundee Liff, you know, handicrafts, things like that, and… and the same in the afternoon… after… you know, after lunch, and then two o’clock ‘till half past three, occupational therapy and… watching television and, and, and that sort of thing, in, in, in the evening, so, nothing… nothing special.’
 
`[Pause] Did it have nice grounds?’
 
`[Pause] Yes.  I mean I think… it was, it was small and… and, and the grounds were pleasant, it was extremely, you know, like most of it, it, these… asylums are extremely well kept. The thing about Murray Royal is it got a, a marvellous view, ‘cause it’s on… it’s on the hillside kind of above Perth and it looks out across the Riff Valley towards the highlands, so it’s got a, got a, you know, very beautiful surroundings, very beautiful view, and… yeah, and, and… I think, I think that… I had a feeling of… I had a feeling of being cared for, certainly at my time in, in Murray Royal, I had a feeling of being cared for, you know which, which…’
 
`Mmm.  Is that what you felt you needed?’
 
`Yeah.  [Pause].’
 
`So, you were saying that you moved… did you move down to London as well with, with your, with your mother?’
 
`Yeah.  I mean I went back to uni… went back to university…’
 
`Right.’
 
`My mother… my mother was… went, went to live near, near Epsom and, and, and that… became my, my home.  I went back to… I went back to Cambridge and… I had another crisis, surprise, surprise… and on this, this time, I had a car… and… I, I, I ended up driving down the first weekend of, of term, of driving down to London to visit somebody I knew down there, and kind of losing touch with reality as I went, and on the way back to Cambridge, I kind of finally lost it to the extent that I got lost in the car, and… ended up… ditching the car, in Hammersmith area, and… [pause] being apprehended by the Police, doing strange things in Hammersmith Broadway, and taken to Banstead Hospital, in, in, in South West London… and… while I was at Banstead, I had my first experience of solitary confinement, and I also had my first, first experience of… ECT.  I can’t remember… a huge amount about Banstead… I mean I wasn’t there for very long, I was there for three or four weeks, but… when I arrived at Banstead, they didn’t know who, who I was, ‘cause… I wasn’t coherent enough, and all they could get out of me… that I was Peter, and I came from Jesus [laughs] which was… Jesus College.  I mean they weren’t to know that.  Jesus College, Cambridge was where I, where I, where I, where I’d come from, but eventually they, they, they made the links.  I mean Banstead is, was a grim hospital, I remember, I remember that about Banstead.  Again, I was in a… in an admission unit separate from the main building, and it was called Downside, and didn’t have much to do with the main building, but the main building, as I remember it, was extremely grim and intimidating, and… I didn’t… I didn’t like the atmosphere of Banstead at all.  Maybe partly because, you know I was, I was put in solitary confinement, for the first time, which is, is not, well… not a pleasant experience.’
 
`Was that on arrival, or… or…?’
 
`No, it was shortly after arrival.  It wasn’t immediately.  I mean I think that… I think that in those days… I, I had a tendency just to get very up… very out of control, and not, not in terms of attacking people but in terms of just being… very agitated and running around and… you know, that sort of thing, and I think probably, that was why I was put in seclusion.  They thought I was, they, they couldn’t control me, in terms of my, you know, protecting my own safety.  But… regardless of whether it’s… you know, whatever the reason, I mean being in… I don’t find being in, in, in solitary confinement is something that, that it’s easy to… to, to come to terms with or to… or to forget, and then on top of it was ECT, having ECT, and…’
 
`Could you just describe seclusion or solitary confinement a little bit more, I mean what… can you remember what was going through your mind…?’
 
`No, no I mean… I can’t.  I mean I, I, I… I can talk about seclusion but… that, that has happened to me on other occasions, later occasions, but… at, at Banstead, things were a bit of a blur really, because I wasn’t, you know, because I think I wasn’t… I was in quite a… a poor state, and I wasn’t there long, and my memories of, of Banstead are a bit kind of patchy, and I, I remember being in seclusion, and I remember the colour of the walls, that were green, in seclusion, and I remember the smell of the seclusion ward in Banstead, but I can’t remember much else… about…’
 
`Mmm… right… and what was the smell, can you describe the smell?’
 
`Oh it was like sawdust.  A kind of sawdusty smell, a dry kind of sawdusty… smell [laughs] I mean I don’t know what… I don’t know why I remember that but I do remember it, but ECT… the thing I remember about ECT, and I can’t remember why they gave me ECT, I can’t remember… giving my consent, to be honest, with you, I’m, I’m not even sure whether I was a voluntary patient at that time, I couldn’t even tell you that, but I do remember being given ECT and I do remember… that it was done, in a Nightingale ward, and you… we all lay on beds, and they’d come down the line, towards you, so you actually hear it all happening, and… you hear… it being given, you hear the person being wheeled away, to the other side of the room and the… you know, the, the curtain being drawn back and going to the next one and they’d work their way down to it, and I mean and I… the occasion that I can remember, I was fairly well down the list, so that, that there were probably about six… other people, who were given ECT while I was lying on the bed, listening to it all, and that’s my major memory of, of that first… occasion being ECT, given ECT, I mean… luckily, or we hope luckily, they don’t give ECT to people in that way any  more because certainly it’s, it’s one of, it’s one of the… the least sensitive and dignified ways of giving ECT that I, that, that, that I could imagine.  So anyway, so… my memories of it, of Banstead are, are, are, are negative memories really…’
 
`Mmm.’
 
`Certainly compared to my… memories of, of Murray Royal.’
 
`Can you remember the… more about… any more about the procedure of giving ECT, they… I mean were they wheeling… I mean, the machine along…?’
 
`Yes.  They basically… I mean they… they basically… they basically, yeah, they wheel the machine… up to beside the bed, you know, they do the old… swab, swab on, on the temples, they… you know, they put, put the… in preparation, electrodes, they, they put the rubber… what, thingamajig [ph] in your throat, and then you get the second injection, and it’s… and you get the prob, prob, prob, prob, prob [ph] you know, as you go out, and, and, and that’s it.’
 
`So they were using… they were using muscle relaxant and…?’
 
`Yeah, oh yes…’
 
`…anaesthetic?’
 
`Muscle, yes, muscle relaxant, yes.  That, yeah, yeah.  But I mean I think that, that… that for me, as with other occasions when I’ve had ECT, it’s not… it’s… it’s the actual procedures, before… it’s, it’s to do with the… it’s to do with how you’re prepared for ECT, before you arrive at the so called clinic, and it’s to do with the waiting for, to be given E, EC, ECT… so, so… I remember at West Park, Hospital, in Epsom, which is one of the hospitals that, that I went to, a couple of years later, when I was given ECT… they used to… they used to… take the men, from the admission ward across to the ECT room, pretty early in the morning, and most of the people who were going to have ECT would be gathered in the kind of waiting room, but because… I was… pretty stoic and… didn’t make a fuss, I, I would more than likely be one of the last people, so you would sit there, and eight people would go over a period of time and come and sit with you, and then you’d have to wait while those eight people were then done and you were done… and, and, and it’s that kind of thing which I, which I.. I remember, in, in many ways as, as much, about… why they are not doing it, first come first served, just because you don’t make a fuss.  You have to wait for you know, for an hour and a half type business, and… but, but anyway, anyway… so Banstead, the… [pause] Banstead was a kind of brief, fairly brief interlude for me and, and for some, reason, I can’t… really [laughs], I  don’t really understand now, in retrospect, that I went back to Cambridge again, before Christmas.  So I’d broken down at the start of that… that term, and I was back at Cambridge again before Christmas, and I remember… do remember going to one of my supervisors, just before Christmas, and he… he’s turned round to me, he’d known me for two or three years now, he’d turned round and he said, `I didn’t expect you to come back`, he said, `What are you doing?  I thought you’d have given up by now.`  And I knew he was quite right, I mean I don’t know what I was doing really, going on, trying to go back to Cambridge, because you know it was… [laughs] to [inaudible] was doing my head in, and it was… I mean it was because… partly because I’d been told I… it was not a good idea [laughs], you know, ‘cause my disposition, if someone tells me you can’t do something and you know you can do it, you, you go on trying to do it, even if it’s not in your best interest.  So anyway I, I arrived back at Cambridge, but I was done really.  I was finished.  Because I was on… I’d had ECT, I was on large doses, by that time, of… Chlorpromazine and in the final year I had to study medieval Latin, as one of… for one of my papers and it, it was… because of all my problems, it was quite a long time since I’d looked at Latin and medieval Latin’s not the same as classical Latin, and basically I couldn’t… I, I realised half way through the, the following term, about February time, that there was no way I could do it.  I mean I was sitting in the university library, staring, and I couldn’t concentrate.  I was, I was gone, and I was drugged up to the eyeballs as well, and so basically I, I, I… I, I hauled up the, my surrender flag, and I got admitted into Fulbourn Hospital which is the big psychiatric hospital outside Cambridge and I spent the rest of the… my, my… rest of that year, in Fulbourn and ended up getting a special class of degree, what they call an aegrotat degree, so I got an honours degree but I didn’t sit the final exams.’
 
`The… what was the… how would you describe the attitude of Cambridge to your comings and goings?’
 
`Well I mean I think they were… they, they were… incredibly tolerant… at one level you know, that they gave me two, two years off, to come back, because I mean I think certainly after the… I did so well in… in my first exams, I think they… they probably recognised that, you know, that, that, that… it was worth while seeing if I could finish, so that in, in that level, they were very tolerant.  I mean I was… I was being supported when I was… when I was at the university by the, I think it’s called the student… Psychological or Psychiatric Service, there was a consultant…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`In the kind of community that was there… that, that was… but particularly to help people, students with, with mental health problems, and she was… she, she was… she was supportive.  As far as the college was concerned, I mean I think they didn’t really know very much, because… [pause] I mean I kept myself to myself to some extent, you know it wasn’t like I was constantly going to my… my… personal tutor, saying you know, `I’ve got problems’.  I, I was keeping myself to myself and, and… and… nobody, I think probably knew the extent of my difficulties… and I mean I never, ever… actually sat down and talked to anybody in… in the college, any of the tutors or whatever, about whether it was a good idea for me to stay.  This was always kind of done at… at one remove, when I was already in hospital, some… something would come through my, my psychiatrist or my mother or father saying `They’ve given you another year.`  So, you know… [pause].  I mean Cambridge was, was, was, for me was… a very difficult period in my life and, and… one, one, one of the things is that, that if you’re… if you’re becoming… a mental patient, or becoming a loony, if you like, to use that phrase… it, it, it… it isolates you from other people, and, and, and when I think of that, my experience of, of having the… you know, these episodes and ending up in psychiatric hospital, were bound to make me, to isolate me from other people.  I mean not only do you kind of fall through your year, you know, so you end up in another year, but, but you actually feel significantly different from other people, because your experience is significantly different from a lot of the people there who have kind of gone straight from, from successful life in, in, in, in… [pause] in a public school or grammar school ever, to a successful life at a top university, but I mean I’d kind of fallen out of that…’
 
`Mmm.’
 
`…that model and that’s partly what becoming a mental patient is about, is that you lose your expectations, of yourself, or what, or what you’re capable of, what’s possible to you and you also lose contact with the, with the kind of expectations of your peers.’
 
`Were those the feelings that were going through your mind, when you got to Fulbourn?’
 
`[Pause] Well I mean I think, I mean I think when I got to Fulbourn, I was just… in such… in… to some extent, working my ticket, but this was… this was the… this was the best way out of a situation, that, that my kind of… my… my… ideal of sitting my final exams and doing very well was now clearly out of… not possible so that, spending the… spending a couple of months in Fulbourn and getting some kind of degree and then… then leaving my university life behind, and going on to whatever, that seemed to be ok, and, and I mean my time in… in Fulbourn, I wasn’t really in that much distress.  I mean I was… you know I wasn’t… I was certainly depressed and drugged, when I arrived at… in Fulbourn but I wouldn’t have said that I was in a crisis.  I, I wasn’t out of control, I wasn’t… I wasn’t… displaying psychotic symptoms, so in some ways it was a… it was a kind of interlude where, where I was just chugging along, filling in time, and there again, one of… what did happen, what did happen at Fulbourn was… I finally got put on to Lithium, in Fulbourn… but Fulbourn, Fulbourn is… was an interesting experience for me because it was… it was by far and away the most progressive… acute, unit I’ve… I’ve ever been on.  I mean it was… Fulbourn… had… the, the director of Fulbourn, David Clarke, had been a pioneer of the… the idea of therapeutic communities on, on, on the wards and although the acute ward I was on, Kent House, wasn’t run as a therapeutic community, there were elements of a therapeutic community approach in as much as we had daily meetings in the morning, which involved… a psychiatrist and other members of staff and which were, was about… talking about, problems, people’s problems and feelings and things, not about who does the washing up, you know.  `Would you like some money from the patients from the patients… patients bank?’
That kind of… meeting, it was a proper, meeting, and also occupational therapy, I mean it was, it was, was far and away better than anything I’ve ever encountered.’
 
`Right.  Shall we just leave it there?’
 
`Yeah, yeah.’
 
[End of DVC Pro Tape 2 – VHS Tape 1 continues]
 
 
[Start of DVC Pro Tape 3 – VHS Tape 1 continues]
 
`Ok, well you were just beginning to talk about Fulbourn…?’
 
`Right.  I mean, Fulbourn… was… special, or memorable I suppose for me, mainly because as, as I’ve said, it… it seemed to be more… progressive and go ahead than anything that I’d encountered up until then, and I mean in retrospect, anything that I encountered subsequently.  And, and… the occupational therapy, for example they were… we were doing things like drama therapy, and, and… psychodrama and, and kind of art therapy that was, was… more, more than just painting, things on things, but… what, you know, you actually painted things and then, then discussed them and so, that was, that was… something that I hadn’t come… come up against before in, in, in, in terms of occupational therapy, which had been very kind of traditional, in the other hospitals I’d been in, been in… and, and I mean I suppose at Fulbourn I was, I was in a fairly, fairly… fairly stable… frame of mind.  I mean I, I wasn’t in great distress when I arrived there and basically I was kind of staying there, partly to fulfil the, the residence requirements of my degree, so I basically was advised to stay there until, you know, until the exams were over, which meant staying two or three months and then, you know, if I was ok to go, and be, and be discharged, and… I was put on Liff… Lithium, about half way through, and… I didn’t actually spend much time in Fulbourn… the main building.  Again it was one of these situations where the acute unit was separate in the grounds from the main building and, so I didn’t really go into the main building very much, although the… the… the, patient centre, there was a patient centre in the, in the main building.  I remember playing football, for, for the hospital, there was a patients team and we, we played football a couple of times against other… other hospitals, and I used to go into, into Cambridge occasionally, to, to my, my room in college, but, but didn’t go in there very much and, and so that, that, that was really, what Fulbourn was, was kind of waiting, waiting for the exam period to finish, and… once it did I, I was discharged fairly quickly and went to… to live… at my mother’s place, near Epsom.’
 
`What was the physical environment like in Fulbourn?’
 
`It was a… it, it… it, Kent House was a, a modern, relatively modern… unit, so it was quite, it was quite good.  It was… yeah, dormitories… it, it was a… it was a… it wasn’t a segregated, unit…’
 
`It was a mixed ward?’
 
`It was a mixed ward, that’s right, and… [pause] we all, we all ate in, we all ate in a canteen.  There were… there were two, three, I think three, possibly three wards in the, in, in the unit, in the admission unit as a whole…’
 
`And how many people in each ward?’
 
`Oh… I can’t remember exactly, but not more than twenty.  It was, it was, it was a… it was a fairly small… wards were fairly small, and… [pause] there wasn’t, I mean nothing, nothing that… that notable really, really happened to me, while I was, while I was there.  I mean the people, the people… the other people on the, on the wards, were, were, were fine.  We got on… got on pretty well and I, and I think that the… the… having kind of, therapeutic type meetings and, and… occupational therapy sessions was, was helpful to that, that extent that…’
 
`Right.  What… can you say a little bit more about how it was helpful or…?’
 
`[Pause] It was something to do.  [Laughs] It was something to do that was, that… that was more interesting than, than… than… than making baskets or grouting or whatever.  I mean I can’t say that… I can’t say that I, that I spent my time at Fulbourn, kind of working on myself to any, to any significant… any significant degree, but, but I mean I think that, that, that… there was… there was the opportunity to think along those lines, and I think the opportunity to work along those lines, if, if, if one wanted to, at, at, at Fulbourn more than, more than else… more than elsewhere that I’d experienced.  But, but as I say, I think my, you know, my… my attitude to Fulbourn was that I was just… I was kind of marking time, and… what would happen next… I suppose in… in, in some way… I, I still… I hadn’t… necessarily bought the idea that I was going to, going, going to be a… a, a kind of… lifelong, consumer of psychiatric services at, at that, at that stage so I think to some extent my, my… my thinking was ok, you know, I’ll get, get my degree and go on to the next stage in my life and hopefully this won’t happen again type of thing.’
 
`[Pause] And… was your consultant sort of markedly different from previous consultants?’
 
`Didn’t really… didn’t really have, have much confidence, with, with my… with my consultant.  I mean the consultant that I, that I knew best, was the consultant who was attached to the student service…’
 
`Right…’
 
`…in Cambridge, and to some extent I was… split between the two of them.  I mean I, it wasn’t a problem, but my consultant at, at Kent House, I saw a few times initially, but then after that, I shouldn’t really have much contact with him and… what, what, what contact I did have with psychiatrists after that, was, was with a… a junior psychiatrist, and she was the one who kind of… looked… looked after me or supervised me when I was put onto… onto Lithium… but…’
 
`Did you find Lithium… made a difference?’
 
`Lithium?  Well, no, I suppose is the [laughs]… is the answer, not immediately… I mean the story actually is that… I was put on Lithium and then shortly after, I was discharged, and I went… back to stay with my mum, and then I… then, then I did, did, did some work, on a… adventure playground in, in… in London, inner London and during the course of doing, working there, as a volunteer, I… got… out of… sync with my… Lithium… taking my Lithium, and I obviously hadn’t understood properly that if you miss a Lithium, you just forget about it and take, you know, take a Lithium the following day and basically what happened is that I overdosed on Lithium, and that was quite unpleasant.  I mean I got tremendous fever, I mean apparently my, my kind of… my… the whites of my eyes turned bloodshot and I was, I was… hallucinating, and… they took me, then took me off Lithium… prior to my next admission, and, and… for quite a long time after that… it was assumed that I was allergic to Lithium.  It’s one of these kind of mistakes, that got into my records and nobody checked with me, so that, that I, that I got diverted away from Lithium and ended up on, on, on Depot Injections, and… and that kind of path, because people assumed that this problem had been because I, I was allergic in some way to Lithium, whereas in actual fact it was due to the fact that I had, that I’d, I’d, I’d, I’d been taking, I’d been overdosing, inadvertently, on it by trying, you know, trying to, trying to catch up on missed doses, and it wasn’t until that was clarified, I mean… maybe ten years later, that I actually got put back on, on to, to Lithium and that was unfortunate because it, it… I think it pushed me into the… into a phase of being on very heavy psychotropic medications which I don’t think were at all necessary, at all helpful, for me, but it was partly because of that kind of misinterpretation of what had happened.  And I mean then, well basically what happened was that, that… that when I came out of Fulbourn, I had this problem with Lithium, that was kind of resolved, and I then did another bit of voluntary work… but then very shortly after that, I… I basically had another crisis, while I was living at… living with my mother, near Epsom and I… I got admitted into… West Park, which is one of my… which is one of the… the kind of Epsom Cluster hospitals, one of the main…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`…around Epsom, and… [pause] I… I, I stayed there, on the… my first admission there was, was for a year, which is the longest admission I’ve ever… I’ve ever had…’
 
`And that was quite… that was longer than any previous… much longer than any previous admission as well?’
 
`I’m sorry?’
 
`It was much longer than any previous admission…?’
 
`Oh yeah, well, yes I mean I suppose… my, my admission at Murray Royal had been some… some, in total, had been something like five… five months, maybe… maybe nearly six months in total but… but certainly not, not a year, and I’ve never, I’ve never… I don’t think, any of my admissions… apart from that, this occasion at, at West Park had been over… over six months, so… and, and… and latterly much shorter, more like six weeks… so West Park was, was different, and when… I mean one of the reasons West Park was different, was that they basically decided they wouldn’t discharge me, until they’d found a therapeutic community for me to go to, so they weren’t happy with the idea of my going back to live on my own, somewhere in, in London, basically, which is what I would… was, was intending to do, so… so it was decided that I should go to a therapeutic community and… I, once I’d been accepted, at a therapeutic community, I then had to… had to wait, until a place became vacant, and, and that, that, that was really… why, why I spent so long at West Park and probably about six months, round about half of the time I was there, was… I was basically kicking my heels.  There wasn’t much… much the matter with me, and… the hospital was doing little or nothing to [laughs] kind of help me…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…sort out any problems that I, that I did have.  I was just, again, I was being held there until, ‘till… ‘till I was discharged.’
 
`Mmm.  And were you… you under section then?’
 
`No.  No I wasn’t under… I wasn’t under section, not, not on that, this occasion, but, but it was… that… I agreed, basically, I’d agreed that this would… this seemed a good way forward, I was, I was quite happy to go to a therapeutic community, and… you  know, there was no way round, you just… I just had to wait.  I mean first of all I had to, had to find… discover whether, whether my local council would fund me to stay and then, you know, had… had to wait for a vacancy to… to come out.  I mean the… the negative part of it was that basically, while I was waiting I was in kind… some kind of limbo you know, that there wasn’t really…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`That time wasn’t used creatively for me at all.’
 
`So how, how were you passing your… your time?’
 
`Well I mean going back to the beginning, I… I mean, the thing is, I mean when I first arrived there, I was in… first admitted, I was in quite… quite severe distress, and so I got… I got admitted to… the… the admission ward, and then after about a week I was transferred to a… locked ward, and… and ended up in solitary confinement.   I mean in, in, in retrospect they, they said that… they couldn’t cope with me on, on the… open ward because, apparently I kept throwing myself out of my bed, but I was… I mean I was in, in, in pyjamas and things, kept in pyjamas, but apparently I got very distressed and I used to try… you know, try to get me to stay in my bed, but on one or two occasions they, they kind of… just settled me on, on my bed and gone away and they kind of heard, heard this tremendous thump, and they’d turn round and go back into the ward and I’m kind of lying on the floor.  So basically, I… again, I was… I was quite agitated, obviously quite agitated and so I think they decided that, that, that… I’d have to go to a locked ward, and I was put in seclusion, solitary confinement, and I went on hunger strike… and, and I think that was certainly partly, maybe even largely because I’d been put in seclusion, and it may also have been because I was… because of  other things that were going on… in, in my own personal drama, but… anyway, I went on, on hunger strike, and they… they had to… delegate a, a nurse, to, to… try and persuade me to eat, and she used to come in every so often into the seclusion room, and trying to persuade me to drink and eat, and I was in there for a couple of days or so, I suppose in the seclusion…’
 
`Uh huh… so you, you refused to eat or drink?’
 
`Yeah.  Yeah.  And, I mean I tried to batter my way out of, of the seclusion room which isn’t… isn’t a very clever idea.  I, I mean I injured my shoulder, not, not, not permanently but… and… it… you know, it certainly… was… you know, wasn’t a nice experience, being locked up in, in this kind of bare room with a mattress on the floor, being in your kind of underclothes basically, and… and a kind of cardboard piss pot, and… you know, people coming in every so often to see if you’re ok, and kind of two people standing by the door, shoulder to shoulder, kind of talking to you, and… I mean in some ways, if you’re not, if you’re not already feeling pretty paranoid and out of it, that kind of experience is, is enough to make you feel that way anyway.  I mean I also had a… the, the extraordinary incident, of being interviewed for Benefit while I was in seclusion, because I’d written a letter, as soon as I got admitted, asked you know, about benefit, and it, the benefit woman from Epsom office came up, and it turned out that I was… in seclusion, so she came in, you know, with supporters, and kind of interviewed me while I was kind of sitting on, on the… on the seclusion room floor in my… in my underpants, and she was trying to find out about my benefit, and it’s a kind of one of these surreal things, and I’ve still got the letter at home that she sent to me, afterwards saying , `You may remember that I visited you on such and such a day and you appeared to be saying such and such and…` you know, it was just really, really, really weird so… but… I mean at least she was… at least she was, was trying to attend to, to some of my needs, as… but which is probably more than what a lot of the nursing staff were doing really, although, you know, they… they were trying to get me to eat and drink, and I mean in the end I did and in the end I, I, I then spent a period of time on the locked ward, with, with the kind of… with the hard cases if you like, and… with the cutlery being counted, you know before and after each meal, and all that kind of number, and then eventually went back to Emerson ward, which was the admission ward I’d come from, and… went into a… a kind of period of being, being given large quantities of medication, then… when that didn’t seem to be working well enough, being given ECT, and… I mean I still wasn’t on section at that point, and I… and I was saying that, that I’m not… I’m not actually happy about being put on ECT, you can’t… you know, put somebody, a voluntary patient, you can’t compel them to have ECT, and they basically said, `If you don’t take ECT we’ll put you on a section and you will have to take ECT.`  So obviously, I took ECT, and… eventually, you know, things stabilised, whether because of the ECT or because of all the drugs that I was taking, you know, tranquillisers and anti-depressants, and… or because of the occupational therapy, or because of the food, I don’t know, but I mean… or because of the passage of time, but anyway, you know, after about three… three months or so, I was ok again, and, and, and as I say, then, then this idea about the therapeutic community was, was, was put forward.’
 
`When you were put in seclusion and you were at your sort of, your worst, or you were feeling at your worst, what do you think, I mean what do you think was the appropriate… what did you want then?  What did you need?’
 
`Well I mean I think… I think there… there may have… may not have been much alternative… to putting me into seclusion.  There may have been, there may not have been, but I think, I mean I think possibly, it, it would have been very difficult for them to supervise me, in the short term, in an open, open ward, so I mean I think that… I…I’m… I’m… as so often, when I’ve been put in seclusion, I’m not saying that it’s… that it… that it’s totally inappropriate… and I… and I don’t think people in my experience, are, are ever put into seclusion for no reason whatsoever, I mean it’s thought about quite carefully, so I’m not… so, so I mean I think that, that… it… it, certainly you can make a case of saying yes, that’s the right place for me to have been, in that particular circumstance.  My argument over that particular episode of seclusion and over ones that, that, that I’ve experienced since then, is what… what do… what do mental health workers do to… support people who are in seclusion and after they come out of seclusion, because my experience is that nothing is done.  Certainly, I’ve never been… or nobody’s ever come up to me after I’ve been in seclusion and said, `Well, you know, how do you feel about all this?`  you know… `Do you want to talk it through?  How does it make you feel about yourself as a… as a person, that this has been done to you?  Are you angry about it?`.  All these kind of issues, which to me are quite significant, because I mean being put in seclusion’s not a pleasant thing, to happen to people, and, and, and… it’s not something that you boast about, either, you know, `Oh, I’ve been put in seclusion.`  So I mean there are a lot of implications about being put into seclusion.  You’ve lost control.  You’ve lost control to such an extent that human beings can’t… can’t… contain you, they’ve got to throw you into a room with no furniture, and, and lock you away until, until, you know, ‘till, ‘till you, you get a grip of yourself.  All these sort of messages are, are, are important ones to… that, that people think about, well I certainly think about and I think other people who have been in seclusion probably do as well, and it seems to me that, that, that… nurses and other mental health workers should be spending time, giving people a chance to talk about these things and come to terms with the experience of being secluded, so it’s not a question about whether it’s right or wrong, or that is sometimes a question…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`It’s a question about whether or not, the caring professions, are actually, are doing enough to, to… to counteract what can be an extremely, damaging experience.  I mean I’ve never got over being put in solitary confinement.  It’s not something that I will ever forget, and it’s not something that I… I find it easy to come to terms with, even now, you know, after thirty years, being in the system, and possibly, I never will, or never would have… but possibly if people had talked to me a bit more about it at the time, it might have, might have been easier to actually, integrate into my… into my experience.  So anyway, that, that, that’s… seclusion… that, that was solitary confinement, and…’
 
`You prefer to call it solitary confinement rather than seclusion?’
 
`Yeah, because that’s what it is, and I mean seclusion makes it sound like, you know, sitting by the banks of a river with a packet of sandwiches and a good book… which it’s not.  I mean it is solitary confinement.  I mean it’s about locking people up, on their own… and there’s a difference between people… being… doing that, and people asking to be locked away, because clearly there are, you know, it happens, and… and particularly in, in, in secure hospitals, Broadmoor etc, where people actually want to be secluded, and… `Can I go there?` and you close the door.  Well to me that’s quite different.  If someone asked to go somewhere, even if they want the door to be locked, that’s quite different from being put there, and prevented from leaving when you, when you want to leave.  So… [pause].  I mean I think there’s a… there’s a… there’s another side to it, solitary confinement, about whether or not solitary confinement, you can look at solitary confinement symbolically as some kind of… rock bottom if you like, in… in the psychotic experience, and, and I would almost… I, I, I would… I could almost say, see… see that kind of angle, but you could argue it’s… maybe it’s necessary, sometimes for people and sometimes… sometimes necessary for me to go into distress, so deeply that in an end, in the end you end up in seclusion… in solitary confinement, on your own in a bare room, and that’s the kind of rock bottom of your psychotic journey and then you come out from that, and I mean I think there is an element in that, that I think you could argue… is useful, and I think in some… to an extent, that may have been useful to me, but… I mean that’s… if you like an everyday occurrence, is… is along these lines of `Get in there and sort yourself out, number…`, which…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…you know, may, maybe there is value in that, in terms of what’s going on, in, in peoples’, in people’s inner dramas, but… but even so, it’s… it, it, it seems to me that it… that it’s a powerful experience that people need to be supported through.’
 
`Uh huh, and it… you were never supported through it in that…’
 
`No…’
 
`…in that way?’
 
`No, and it… and latterly, in, in another hospital that I was, I was in, Napsbury… I, I was put in seclusion and it was never mentioned.’
 
`Right.’
 
`Again, afterwards.  I mean I was put in seclusion as part… part of the admission.  I was admitted late at night, I was, I was too agitated to be controlled by the night staff, so they judged, so I was taken to another ward, put in seclusion for the night, got up the following morning, I was washed down and… basically delivered back to the admission ward, and nobody ever said a word about it again, and I don’t even think that my consultant knew about it, until I mentioned it to him, a couple of weeks later. So it’s that kind of thing, that, that I, I think, is not excusable.  That, that… as, as though it’s just… something that happens.  I mean it’s an important event.  I mean I am a… I’m, I’m, I… I… I was trained to work with pre-school children… so… being violent and out of control as a man, and being dealt with, in, in violent restraint, kind of ways, is extremely important.  I mean the fact that I lose control, it, it means a lot to me, particularly when it used to happen when I was working, earning my living, working with pre-school children, you know, it’s… it’s… you know what I mean, it’s got enormous significance.’
 
`Mmm.’
 
`And for nobody to actually, to actually have the imagination to actually talk, or get… let me talk about it, so you carry this thing around with you and no… I… I… and nobody mentions it and nobody… nobody looks at it, and it’s because they… it’s partly because, and I don’t want to go on too long about this but it’s partly because people are guilty about it.  It’s because mental health workers, know that it’s wrong and it’s a… it’s a failure, I mean it happens because other things have failed, that’s why people end up in seclusion… in, in solitary confinement.  It’s because it’s a failure, so they… so that mental health workers don’t want to look at it and they… because they don’t feel happy about what they’ve had to do, and it’s difficult to go to somebody and say look, you know, this… this is what we did to you, and we know it was… let’s talk about it.  Instead, what I used to get, on a couple of occasions, was when I was let out of seclusion, they said, `Well we did it for your own good…` which seems to me to be far too pat an answer, it’s getting… it’s getting the, the nurses off the hook, but it’s actually… puts responsibility on you, that leaves all the important questions unanswered.  Anyway… [pause]… I mean I think, I think that… solitary confinement is one of the… is a kind of cancer in a way, that, that, that still exists in the system.  I don’t think you ever get rid of a cancer, because I think, you know, there are certain… there are occasions when it’s always going to… there’s going to be no other alternative, but it’s the way you actually handle it…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`…is, is, is, is important.  But I mean the… the thing, the thing for me about, about West Park, was… that I… leaving aside the first couple of months or so, with… with these sort of difficulties, was that… I was kind of living in an asylum, and, and I wasn’t… I’d kind of gone from being… if you like a revolving door… patient, to being a resident almost of the asylum, so that I started working in the… you know, I actually worked in the stores, within the hospital, for a period of time.  I went out to… a kind of industrial therapy, industrial training unit in Epsom, where I kind of did… incredibly difficult for me, things like soldering… fuses and cutting sheets of… of plastic, six foot three exactly, you know, and that’s the kind of thing I cannot do, and it was totally… it was totally, unrelated, really, to what I was going to… going to do.  I mean this was like within a year of coming, of graduating from university and I mean even worse, I spent a couple of months, in the… in the kind of industrial therapy unit in the hospital itself, basically doing things like filling, filling… bags with, with, with mixed herbs, pot pouris, and sticking tops onto plastic… world ward two Panzer tanks and kind of doing that, hour after hour after hour, and… totally, totally pointless, except that it got me off the ward, and… that was about it.  I mean the system was, that after about three… three months or so, couldn’t go to OT any more you know, you had to move on from OT because you’d been going to OT too long, so you got on… get on this other, other kind of circuit, and… that, that… but, it was filling up time, and, and that’s… that’s what I felt… that basically the approach, that… the asylum was taking to me at that point, had, had no relation to my needs.  It wasn’t actually trying to move me on, in any way whatsoever, it was just basically giving me routine tasks to fill my day, and I spent a lot of time just, you know, doing those, those things.  It was a total… total waste of time really.’
 
`Did you form any relationships with the other patients?’
 
`Not, not lasting relationships.  [Pause] Yeah, there… I mean there were… there were… I had friendships with two or three of the kind of younger… younger men in my ward and in, in another ward, sort of people who are mid-twenties, but, but it was only to a certain, certain level.  I mean it, I’ve never actually formed a… lasting relationship with anybody that I’ve met in a psychiatric ward, I mean it’s the difference between the psychiatric ward and when I went to therapeutic community…’
 
`Right…’
 
`In the therapeutic community, there are two or three people I met, but I, you know I still… I’m in contact with and are friends of mine, kind of, thirty years later, but, but not in the… in the… in, in the psychiatric ward…’
 
`Why… why do you think that was?  Do you… I mean does… do you think there’s a reason for that?’
 
`Well I mean I think… I think it’s the… it’s, it’s to do with the nature of the experience… in, in a psychiatric ward and in a therapeutic community, it’s a much less intense, experience on a psychiatric ward.  I mean in, in… in a therapeutic community you get to know the, the kind of… the inner recesses of, of people, fairly quickly, where, where that doesn’t tend to happen…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…so much in a, in, in a psychiatric ward.  And… and then I think that, think… people quite often… people quite often… I think you… quite often you have, have fairly… fairly… close… relationships with other people on a ward or on other wards in certain areas, but then, then… I think it, it dissolves, once, once… well certainly in my experience, once I, once I get out of the psychiatric ward, the idea of going back to visit so and so, which kind of sounds nice, and at the time that you’re actually saying goodbye you, you say you’re going to do it, but when you actually think about it you want to get that experience out of your system.  I mean I think that’s.. for me that’s a… that, that, that’s… an aspect of it.’
 
`So after all this waiting around you finally moved onto a therapeutic community?’
 
`Yeah, yeah.  Just, just one thing about, before I leave West Park, that, that… I, I, I think one of the aspects that I remember about West Park was, if you like, the kind of social activity, because the… the, the… at that time, asylums like, well, West Park, still did have quite a lot of social activity going on, so there was… there were kind of… there were dances, there was kind of regular film shows in the hall… there, there were parties on, on the different wards that you could go to, and also… but also we used to go… we used to go and visit other… asylums in the area and play cricket or bowls or whatever and that, and at that… you know, I used to be, be involved in that, and I used to be at Horton, which is the, the next door hospital in, in, in the… in the Epsom cluster, they had this kind of… sports day, where all the… all the, well there were teams, from all the different hospitals in the Epsom cluster kind of… competing, and, and I remember that, so that was an aspect that in a way, I didn’t… encounter, in any other place, ‘cause by the time I’d got… went to Napsbury, which is, which is a similar, was a similar type of asylum, but that, that kind of ten years later, in a way, that, those types of activity were, were beginning to decline.’
 
`So West Park was sort of a… a flourishing asylum in that, in that sense? [both talking together]’.
 
`Well yeah, it was… it was, it, it was, it… that’s right, it was more those sort of activities were more, were more flourishing and I mean in that time you weren’t… people weren’t seriously talking about the run down of, of the asylums, and by the time I started using Napsbury, ten years… ten years later, that was clearly coming onto the agenda that this was going to happen, and, and was already starting to happen…’
 
`[Coughs]’
 
`But yes, I mean I went, after… after… waiting, until I think the late summer of ’73, I then went to a therapeutic community, which the Richmond Fellowship community in… in, in West London and was there for a year, and that was… very different.  I think that… that I was kind of on the verge of becoming a community mental patient…’
 
`Uh huh…’
 
`…by that point, because I hadn’t got a profession, I hadn’t got a career, I’d spent… a lot of time in the previous two or three years in psychiatric hospitals, including a year at West Park and I was getting… I mean if someone had said to me, `What’s your profession?`, I might well have said, `Community Mental Patient.`  You know I was beginning to feel, perhaps this is real life, living in an asylum, that is real life, so I think I was… that going to the therapeutic community was quite important in as much as they wouldn’t take on that stuff, and I kind of started off, talking to my… my counsellor within the community, a staff member who was… counselled me.  I was sort of saying, `Oh, I’m a manic depressive, I’m a long term mental patient`, you know all that kind of stuff and she sort of said `Oh I’m not interested in, in all that… we… we believe that you can, you know… take control of your life, and you know, don’t want to know about all these labels that are kind of getting you off the hook of doing that…` so I think that was important, psychologically.  I mean it didn’t… I mean the community, the year in therapeutic community didn’t in any way prevent me from going on, going in and out of psychiatric hospitals and units, but it did I think, make me feel well actually I can sort my life, or I can make a good try at it, rather than give in…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…and become… go on to the kind of community mental patient circuit.  [Pause].’
 
`So what was the… what was the set up at the… Richmond Fellowship, what can you…?’
 
`Right, it was a… it was… a hostel for about… about fifteen, twenty people.  It was basically for anybody… sort of from seventeen to sixty five, and it… any type of problem, any type of diagnosis, basically and it was the training house, for the, for the Richmond Fellowship at the time, so that, so that it was, it was a kind of a… it was one of their flagship communities if you like, and it was run, it was basically… we, we had our… we had… a community… a community meeting of the whole house, once a week, we had small groups, with two staff members of therapeutic groups and then each of us had, had a staff member as an individual counsellor and… there were various kind of work groups, to kind of do various aspects, of, of the… of the domestic chores, like you know, do the cooking, do the cleaning, all that kind of thing, and the idea was that it was you know, that, that we… we were running the community, which of course wasn’t true.  I mean, and there were a lot of mystification… I think went on, that… you know, that we had the power, the residents had the power, where we didn’t have the power, we didn’t… you know when it came to… when it came to the… to certain things, there were certain rules that were laid down by the staff that we couldn’t… change.  For example, if, if somebody was involved in a… a violent incident, if a resident was involved in a violent incident, was the instigator of the violence, they had to leave the house, even if all, all the other residents felt there were mitigating circumstances, etcetera, etcetera, but that was basically a rule, so there were a number of rules in actual fact.   So it was partly looking, being kind of cynical about it…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`It was… it was… there was a lot of kind of… hiding… of the power relationship, you know, like…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`…in a… in a, in a… in, in an asylum it’s fairly clear who’s got the power and who hasn’t got the power and it’s, you know it’s fairly open.  In a therapeutic community I think there’s a lot, lot of… sort of mystification, a lot of… sometimes psychotherapeutic gobbledegook, that kind of, kind of can be used, to, to make sure that, that the staff have the power and, and… and, and the residents don’t, or only have the, the feeling that they’re in power.  But having said that, it was a very good experience, for me, a very useful experience, a very intense experience in particular… I mean a lot happened.  I mean people throwing themselves out of… out of windows and you know, committing suicide.  There were two or three suicides while I was there, and, and, and people getting into great distress and kind of calling emergency meetings in the middle of the night, and everybody going down, and, and so… you know, the… it was very involving and in fact… while I was there, it was my world and there was very little that went on out, outside, and a, and a criticism could be that, that it was supposed to be a half way house as well, you know, that you were going on from there to, to live in your own place, and in some ways it was such an intense experience that, that a lot of people weren’t really able to prepare themselves for actually leaving.  But, I mean I learnt a lot I think, from, from being there, and I made a few, two or three really good friends, in fact my oldest friend from London days, is, is someone that I met at, at that therapeutic community, and… and a couple of staff members as well that I’m, I… you know, I, I, I’m still in contact with, so… so, yeah, it was, it was, it was positive.’
 
`It sounds very different from all the hospital experiences?’
 
`Yes.  Yeah.  I mean because you were living… because… there was much more… closeness between the staff and, and, and the residents, I mean there wasn’t this kind of… this, this kind of hierarchy, you know, that… that you have in a, in a psychiatric hospital, a kind of distance between the, the mental health workers and the… and, and the patients, and that was much less so, in, in the…’
 
`Did the workers, some of them sleep over… live there?’
 
`The staff?’
 
`Yeah.’
 
`No.  No, there was no… there was… there, there was… all… although, yes there was, at the back there was a flat.  There were a couple of staff that lived downstairs, but, but most of the staff lived nearby, and… yeah, it was… it was, it was… it was very different… and I mean I think the thing is because, partly because we were encouraged, almost forced, to… work together and be involved in each other’s problems, and I don’t think that that, always happens, in, in an, in an acute ward.  I mean I think the one that, that… at Fulbourn, the one I mentioned, I think there, the, the, there were… some structures that were actually trying to encourage people to, to be… you know more involved in each other’s… lives if you like and problems, but most of the acute wards that I, I’ve been involved in, that I’ve experience of… there either isn’t anything, any structures like that, or in actual fact there’s a kind of spoken or unspoken discouragement, for, for patients to get involved, too involved with each other.  I mean in the psych… in, in, in the… in a therapeutic community it was impossible, or extremely difficult not to be involved… for, at a fairly intense level, with… a lot of the other people and their problems, and, and that was… that… was good.’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`For me anyway.’
 
`Just to sort of…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…round that bit up, do you think… do you think that sort of place could have been more helpful earlier in your… you know, earlier in your career?’
 
`Umm…’
 
`For want of a better word…’
 
`[Pause].  Possibly.  [Pause].  I mean I think that… I think that… if you go right back to the beginning, or, or my first admission, I think that, that if I’d not gone back to Scotland, to… to… to Liff, but had sTayd outside the psychiatric system in some way, the… that might have made a crucial difference… because I think that, that at that point, my distress wasn’t very… very, very deep, and I think if I’d gone to… had some kind of… other kind of intervention, along the kind of talking, interacting side, that might well have put me on a completely different path, whereas I think the fact that I got, kind of… referred into the psychiatric acute ward approach to my problems, although very understandable, why it should happen, I think in a way, that was… that was probably going in at the deep end and it then kind of, kind of… tipped the whole, my whole, my whole expectation…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`Of how this problem should be dealt with, along that particular line, and… and kind of made me, yeah, yeah I think it’s… I think… [pause] I think there’s… there’s a strong argument anyway for saying that people, myself included, would benefit from talking first, before medicating.  I think once you start medicating people then you’ve, you’ve got to make up a lot of, kind of lost ground, if you want to start talking, after, afterwards…’
 
`Mmm’
 
`It’s better to talk first, and medicate afterwards, rather than the other way round.’
 
`Ok, we’d better leave it there…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
[End of DVC Pro Tape 3 – VHS Tape 1 continues]


[Start of DVC Pro Tape 4 – VHS Tape 1 continues]
 
`Ok… were there any other… therapies that…?’
 
`Well, I mean when I was in, when I was… [pause] at the Richmond Fellowship, house, I started to get involved in, in I suppose you’d call, human, humanistic therapies, encounter groups… gestalt groups, bio-energetics groups, those, those sort of things which were, were being… promoted I suppose in, in, in London at the time.  I mean they were… it, it was… it was a kind of… a… there was an explosion, a first kind of explosion of the… the, those kind of activities…’
 
`So this was outside of… outside of Richmond Fellowship?’
 
`Yeah, this was outside of… the, the Richmond Fellowship House, but, but, but… some of the people who were… were working at the Richmond Fellowship House were, were connected with these, sort of activities, but there were two or three kind of centres, in London at the time, that were kind of offering various types of, of groups, to anybody, and I… and I and, and one or two of the other people in the community, got involved in those sort of groups, and… it was… well it was a very mixed experience for me, because I mean it was, it was totally unregulated in a way that you could simply go along and say, `I want to… I, I want to enrol for this particular encounter group…` which might take a… take, take a day, it might be two days or whatever, and, and basically you would be asked a few simple questions about your… your background and, and… and… sometimes, about whether you were taking psychiatric medications and, and if so, what.  But I, but I’d never heard of anybody actually being, being turned down, because they were taking a psychiatric medication.  But I think the… the, the, the difficulty was that… that the groups could be made up of, of a very wide range of people, some of whom were, had, had, had… were just, just ordinary young people wanting to meet other young people, and, and kind of do something interesting, interactive with, with them and then there were some people who might have particular problems they worked on and then there was probably a minority like myself who actually had already kind of long term major problems and some of us had experience of, you know, being on the receiving end  of psychiatry, and it could leave you wide open, and I mean I got a lot, a lot of positive things from it, but I also started to come across real difficulties.  Once, for example, I, I was… I was the one who was doing the work in the group, and it was a kind of an assertion exercise, where the, where… the other members of the group, make a line, and they link arms across the, across the room, and you are encouraged to force your way through this line to the other side, and I gave up, and basically sat down on the floor in a corner and… then, the kind of group pressure came, you know, why did you do that, why don’t you… you know, you’re not assertive enough and this kind of… stereotype already of me, in the group as a not particularly assertive person, and I said `Well have you ever been in seclusion, and have you ever tried to battle your way of a… out, out of a seclusion door?’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`And… you can’t do it.  All you can do is wait, and it’s kind of just complete boring… complete… incomprehension of the experience, I mean just not, not aware of that, of that kind of angle at all, and, and you know and… and I kind of started, started to think after that, well hang on a second, what is this?  These people have got no idea, about what, what my experience has really been like and it’s you know, it’s, we’re working at a completely different level here.’
 
`Mmm.’
 
`And… and then, there, there were other things that, that, that, that were… a bit… dodgy as well.  I mean I think the whole, the whole thing was, was kind of… people, people of whatever type were, were, were open to… to having bad as well as good experiences in, in, in that kind of environment, but then I… then what really made it for me was, in the end, settled it for me was that… one of the group leaders that I knew fairly well, by that time, rang me up one day and said, `I’ve got somebody in my flat and she’s very distressed, and I think she’s a schizophrenic, can you advise me what to do?`, and I thought, hang on a second, you know, I’m… [laughs] I know I… I… and I’m, I’m supposed to be one of your… customers so to speak, one of the people that you’re helping and, and, and you’re ringing me up asking me how to cope with someone with schizophrenia, and I thought no, that’s not… you know, I… I can’t go on with this, I mean it’s clear that these people haven’t… well, don’t appear to have, you know, most… ones… some of the ones I know don’t seem to appear to have the… the… the knowledge, basically, to, to… to, to make this a safe place, so I, I got, I got, I got out of it after that, and… [pause] and I think there is… I mean I think there is definitely, a… in that, at that kind of… event, but also in other situations that, if people… if people don’t… aren’t familiar with the experience of using mental health services, using acute wards, using asylums, being in seclusion, being given ECT, being given ECT without… against your will, I mean if you’re not familiar with all that kind of… negative experience then, it does separate us, us out and, and… it does… does make… it does make it difficult.  Because I think that at a certain, at a certain point, your, your life experience becomes very different from, from the general, general life experience, so you’re not just working on your problems, you’re working on the problems that the psychiatric system has, has, has… has engineered while trying to help you.’
 
`At this time in, in London, was, was this the time when sort of R. D. Laing was active?’
 
`Well it wasn’t connected with R. D. Laing.  This, well, well this was in, in the mid 1970s, talking about nineteen seventy… well, 1974 kind of, kind of time.  I mean yes, I mean R. D. Laing was, was… was active and it was kind of a… the, the, the, the same sort of period as, as, as…’
 
`Kingley Hall [ph] was it?’
 
`Yes.  Yeah, yeah, I can’t remember when Kingsley Hall, Kingsley Hall closed, but it, it, it, I think Kingsley Hall was, was, was, was still, was still running in, in the mid 1970s, I think…’
 
`Right…’
 
`But… but…’
 
`So were you aware of that sort of, I don’t know…’
 
`No…’
 
`… that sort of thinking, no?’
 
`I, I, I wasn’t no, and I wasn’t in contact with that, that really at all.  I mean a lot of this, this, this… kind of encounter group, activity that I was… involved in, was… was kind of pretty American, and it’s… it’s coming across from America and quite a lot of the… the group leaders were American, and… but it, it was… I think it wasn’t… it wasn’t designed to address the… address the needs of people who were using mental health services, long term, or people with psychotic problems, I mean it was, it was, it was a much more kind of growth thing for, for, for everybody, and I think in some ways, I got, kind of got sucked in as, as other people did because we were, we were searching for other ways, and we were searching at a time when conventional psychiatry, wasn’t… keen to, to… to entertain the idea that people with psychotic diagnoses, could benefit from talking approaches.  I mean I was, I was… I mean, at this kind of time, I was being, being kind of hindered, by my psychiatrist, from actually seeking out these sort of… treatments.  Now I went ahead and did it anyway, but… but this is an era when, the… when the idea that people with psychosis, can benefit from talk, talking treatments, was, was much… much more revolutionary than it is now, you know, it wasn’t… much less accepted, that, that, that talking…’
 
`So your consultant was actively discouraging from…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…getting involved?’
 
`Yes.  And, and, and from looking at… from looking at the content if you like of my psychotic episodes, you know this, don’t worry about that, it’s meaningless, it’s just like, you know, it’s… it’s like a… a steam, steam train who… whose wheels are going so fast that the pistons come off, that was… what one of my consultants said to me, about that time.  So… I mean you… I mean the approach that basically, that I was encountering in… in terms of my, my, my, my problems at… you know, in, in the… in the seventies, was, you know, this… `You’re suffering from a cyclical… disease, keep taking your medication…` and that’s about it, you know that… I mean it, it was… a very simple kind of… organic if you like, approach to, to, to my, to my problems, and…’
 
`Mmm…so, during this time did you have… any crises or readmissions?’
 
`Well I’d gone on… I mean I’d gone on, having… readmissions.  I suppose an average once every, every, every two… two years, and, and that yeah, that, that continued throughout the seventies, and, and… and the eighties, and the nineties, really… it’s, kind of two… two, two and a half, three years, you sort of, there’s never… I’ve never, I’ve never, there’s never been a, a long period, you know of, of, of, of not having some kind of, some kind of crisis… so that, that basically what, after I left… after I left the therapeutic community, what I was trying to do was to… was to try, trying to work and possibly develop some kind of a career, working with children, at the same time as… having periodic… readmissions into… into psychiatric hospital.’
 
`Did you not want to stay longer than a year in the, in the Richmond Fellowship?’
 
`No.  I mean it wasn’t… it, it, it… you were supposed to stay for a year, and I, and I basically, didn’t want to stay any longer.  I mean I wanted to, I, I wanted to, to get on…’
 
`Right…’
 
`…and, and, and kind of have a more, a more normal kind of life in a way [sirens in background]…’
 
`Right…’
 
`Because it was, as I say, it was a…’
 
`[Inaudible] [both talking together]’
 
`It was kind of all consuming…’
 
`So then did you study, child… care or… [both talking together]’
 
`Well I’d already… I’d, I’d already studied… pre-school… work, I mean I, I got a… I got a diploma for working with pre-school children before I left the, the therapeutic community, and yes, I mean and I, and I started working, with children.  I mean I, I, at one point I was working with, with… with teenagers on adventure playgrounds, but that, that… I wasn’t… I wasn’t tough enough for that, I wasn’t enough of an authority figure for that, so then I concentrated on working with pre-school children and worked in various different… different places, but what… what happened in the end was… towards the end of the seventies, that, was basically my psychiatrist, and the caring team, decided that… they were going to withdraw their… their approval for me to go on working with children because I was having, you know… crises… and… they believed it was due to working with children, and… and so I had to give up working with children, because I… I couldn’t really go on work… getting work unless I had the backing of, of, of my psychiatrist to give me references and, and support for example, and… and… I then went to work in, in the book trade for… for John Menzies, and, and I ended up working for them for about three years in, in… in, in a couple of their shops.  I mean the… the situation that I, that I… faced, I suppose is, is… that, that, that if I… if I have a… a crisis when I’m at work, and, and go into hospital for, for… a short stay… I’ll… I’ll, I’ll usually end, end up losing my job, but I, I don’t… I… but… my, my problem in a way has been not, not so much that I’m being, being discriminated against in terms of getting work, although I have experienced that, but it’s been the problem about once I’ve got a job, and, and… something goes wrong, my employer will usually try to get, get rid of me.  Once when I was working in a, in, in a nursery attached to a college of education in north… north London, and, and I was employed… and, had a, without having… without being asked to reveal anything about my health, and I then had a crisis, which caused a re-admission within two or three weeks of starting, and… the woman who had in… who employed me, went to great pains, while I was still in hospital, to persuade me to resign and give up my job and it, and this kind of culminated in me leaving the hospital for the first… my first occasion out of the hospital, and going to north London and having an interview with her, during the course of which she said, that, that I’d got no right to be working with, with children, that it was against the law and I should never… be able to work with children again, in all my life, and bye bye… and I went home… I went back to the hospital feeling pretty, pretty awful, and… went to see one of the OT, OT women to talk about it, and she beats me to what I wanted to say, by saying `We’d really like you to run the… the children’s races at the fete we’re having next weekend.`  And so, you know there, you’re kind of stuck in a… I mean it wasn’t true, I mean I, I… I went down to the library and I looked up and I found you know, it’s not… I’m not legally prevented from ever working with children again, but you know, it was like, just a  very negative reaction that this woman had employed me without finding out about my record.  I hadn’t lied, she’d actually given… she’d actually given me, a… a more responsible job than the one I actually applied for and then something went wrong and so she was, you know, she wanted me out and she wanted me to make, feel bad about it for some reason.  So that, that’s the difficulty, is, is, that I’ve faced, is, is what happens, when people… if something does go wrong and people find out, and, and quite often employers won’t stick with you.  John Menzies were the great exception.  Scottish company, of course… and I mean I hadn’t, I hadn’t actually divulged anything, when I first worked, worked for them.  I’d left the health… bit, on the application form empty and I hadn’t been asked about it in the interview and I, there again, I, I, I cracked up within two or three weeks of… a month or so anyway, fairly soon after starting work, and they basically said, `Oh it’s fine, come back when you’re well.`  Which I did and I worked for them for another two years or so, and they were, they were a great employer.  So… so… when it comes to looking for work, I mean the big question obviously, for, for anybody with a mental health record is, is, is when to reveal it, and how much do you, do you reveal, you know.  We all go through these, these kind of… debates with ourselves about what to do and what’s honest, all the rest of it.  I mean I decided at a certain point in my life that I wasn’t going to lie, about it, though I didn’t… didn’t… didn’t believe I had anything to hide [laughs], and that was probably not a very good idea in terms of getting a job [laughs].  But… it made me feel better at the time, and… I mean on occasions I would actually kind of be extremely up front about it, and I once got an interview solely on the basis that I wrote a letter, saying I am a manic depressive, lar de da.  I mean I didn’t get the job in the end, but I got the interview and it’s quite clear I wouldn’t have got it, if I hadn’t written, in, in those… terms.  But I mean, I mean clearly, I mean numerous jobs I’ve, I’ve, I’ve gone for but, that I’ve done excellent interviews, until it’s come to the, you know, health record bit, and you’ve got to explain, you see.  I mean if, if, if you… if you’re age thirty… thirty, thirty five and you’ve got a degree and four A levels and ten O levels or something, and, and you’re… you’re applying for a job as a… as a… as a book buyer, or a shop assistant or something, I mean you can’t just sort of… fudge it up, in some way, you know.  I mean after you got… after you’ve gone past a certain stage, your record is such that you’ve got to, I feel that you’ve got to explain it, you can’t… you can’t hide it, even it’s it right, even if you wanted to, but you simply can’t, because people put two and two together.  So, so… one of the worst things that happened to me in terms of unemployment, of, of discrimination was that I, I… I, I got an interview for a job with what, what has now become a very prestigious book selling chain, but at the time it was only just starting out, but I went… I was interviewed by the managing director, and I’d said… fairly early on in interview that, that I suffered from manic depression, and then, then spent twenty minutes explaining to him, what manic depression was and how it would affect my ability to operate a till and things like that [laughs], and at the end of the interview I said to him, `Well look, don’t believe me, you can contact my psychiatrist, and, and she will give you a… you know, let you know, the truth of it from a more objective point of view` and he said `Fine.’  About a week later I got this letter, the most patronising letter I can ever remember, basically saying `You’re not fit to operate a till`.  I mean I’d been working for three years for John Menzies doing nothing else, done that… and… basically, `We’re doing you a favour by not giving you this job because you’re not up to it…` and of course, hadn’t spoken to my psychiatrist.’
 
`Had or hadn’t?’
 
`Hadn’t, oh no, hadn’t spoken to my psychiatrist.  I mean just sort of… sort of we’re… we’re… we’re doing you a favour mate, at the age of thirty five, you know, you’re not even on, you’re not even on for operating a till in a book shop.  I mean… and, and you spent, twenty five minutes trying to explain to him what manic depression was, which he clearly never… hadn’t a clue.  I mean that made… [laughs].  It’s only about two years ago that I started going back into that particular chain of book shops.  I mean I would never go in… [laughs] but it’s a good chain of book shops.  I mean you can have a good chain of bookshops, you can have a lousy managing director, that’s the proof.’
 
`What… can you describe what would sort of… precipitate or proceed a sort of crisis or a…?’
 
`Stress I suppose, is the… is, is the…’
 
`So it was often, when you were…’
 
`…simple…’
 
`…when you were starting a new job, that was a stressful time sometimes?’
 
`Yes, I mean what… start… starting a new… stress related to change was quite often in, in the seventies, ‘cause I was living on the kind of bedsit circuit, I didn’t have a stable base so that a change of job quite often meant a change of accommodation as well, ‘cause of moving to a different part of London or whatever, so that, that, that quite often the combination of starting a new job and, and moving to a new bedsit or whatever, was, was… was a major stress, I mean and then later on, in the eighty… in the 1980s and, and the nineties, the stress was more connected with doing things in the, in the service user and survivor movement.  Things like speaking at conferences or organising conferences, but usually it’s… some, some kind of major stress, which I find difficult to deal with, and then that leads to… leads to the kind of… behaviours if you like, that, that, that… that I find difficult to cope with and that other people certainly kind of never cope with and, and that leads to intervention.  So I don’t think it’s anything to do, personally, with having a cyclical disease.  I mean I think that was, looking back on my history in, in, in, in the system, that, that, that is a… in my humble non-expert opinion, is, is… a red herring, but it… that, that, that, that my… crises have occurred around about times when certain stressful things are happening, I mean and to that extent I can predict it.  I don’t think it’s to do with a crisis, or with a, with a… a cyclical swing that somehow gets, gets… goes over the top at one particular point.’
 
`Right.’
 
`And… I mean I think the difficulty for me, for me, and that’s shaped my… my experience, of mental health services is that… I, I go very rapidly from being ok to being not ok, and that, that quite often means that I get sectioned… very often means that I get sectioned, I get admitted compulsory, so… that, that certainly from the mid seventies, 1970s onwards, most of my admissions have been under sections of the… of the mental health act and that clearly is, is, is… is, is a problem.’
 
`So you’ll, you’ll be… doing something that leads to you being…?’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`Sort of, attracts the attention of the Police or the psychiatric services…?’
 
`Well occasionally, I mean sometimes… sometimes it’s a question of, of, of, of losing a degree of control and going out onto the street or the road and doing something that draws, draws…’
 
`For example…[both talking together] [inaudible]…’
 
`…attention… you know, stopping the traffic, where I… where I live, in, in Cricklewood, actually going out in the rush hour and standing in the road… by the traffic lights and just actually preventing the traffic from going.  Picking fights, on the street… getting very… very agitated and calling out in the streets… and kind of making loud speeches or exclamations outside cafes in, in Cricklewood or Kilburn, all that kind of, kind of thing, and, and so either, I mean so that may mean that the police are, are, are called and I get admitted under section 136.  Alternatively if that doesn’t happen, it’s quite often by the time, by the time the crisis team, community psychiatrist… psychiatric nurse, whoever, comes to visit me, because I’m in distress and I’ve said I’m in distress, that I’m actually not in a… not one thing to, to, to, to go in voluntarily, so that I may be sectioned by a team, and go in without the police.  I mean if the police are… if the police are involved, if I go… if I have to go to the police station, then one of the ordeals is that… you end up in a police station cell.  You basically get in… it’s solitary confinement again, when you’re at… in the kind of pit of your distress and you, you’re waiting for the… the… the team to come out to assess you and, to me that’s… totally unacceptable that, that we should be doing that to, to people.  I don’t see what, that, that police station cells are not a suitable to, to, to detain people in great distress, and, and I mean it should be, should be outlawed and it certainly traumatised me on a couple of occasions.  I mean one occasion I was put in the… in a police station cell, and I was pretty out of it, and… very, feeling very negative about myself and they’d left… there was a toilet, you know, it was an open toilet in the cell, somebody had left bleach in the toilet, and I actually washed the whole cell and myself, in bleach because it, you know, because of the way I was feeling, and… I was very lucky actually, because when I, when they actually did get me into hospital, they, they realised, somebody said, `What’s all the stuff all over him?`, and I’d got my eyes, were coated with it, with, with bleach, and they managed to get it all off, get it out… get it out of my eyes and I went… had to go to see the eye specialist the following day, from, from the acute ward and it was ok, but… I mean that’s… that’s a dramatic example, but, but I mean I think it’s just not appropriate in the same way it’s not appropriate, to, to have… to use seclusion in, in hospitals.  It’s certainly not appropriate to have police cells being used as a place of safety when you can build other… other facilities, even in a police station.  So, so yeah, so that, so that’s the, the question, I mean, so… there’s… there’s, there’s the trauma of, of actually being, being admitted under, under section, which I think’s always greater than the trauma of being… going in voluntarily, and of course the problem is once you… once you’re in hospital, on a section, is that you’re… you, your liberties are, are restricted.  I suppose that there’s two things that affect me, in… in that respect.  One is your freedom of movement.  Very few on a section, it’s going to take you longer before you actually get allowed off the ward, to, to go for a walk, and then quite often what you have to do is you have to go through this endless reporting routine, so… you want to go up to the… you’re on a section, you want to go up to the… to the café at, at Napsbury, so you’ve got to go to… into the nursing office, talk to the, to the nurse in charge and say, `Please nurse, I’m going… want to go off the ward.`  `Where are you going to?`, `I’m going to the… to the café.`  `How long are you going to be?`, `I’m going to be twenty minutes…`, go, come back, you come into the ward again, you go in through… you know, what I mean?  `I’m back.`  And that goes on day after day, you know, what… while you’re on, while you’re on section…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`So there’s that… number.  The other thing is that you’re not… you can never win an argument when you’re [laughs]… when you’re on a section, you know.  If, if there’s a discussion of any kind, about your care and treatment or about your behaviour, with a… with a, with a mental health worker and you’re on a section, ultimately you know that they can say `Well this is the way it is, you’re on a section`, so you know, you just feel even more powerless, than you… than you normally… normally would, and… I mean I, in some ways, personally, I don’t think being on a section, makes a huge difference, to my, the way I’m treated, but it, but it does actually just aggravate your feeling of, of powerlessness, and, and, and it aggravates… the, the kind of… the, the negative side of some of the routines.  I mean one of the things I remember was… [pause] I was on, I was in, I was on… on an acute ward somewhere, and there weren’t enough chairs [laughs] in the day room to go round.  It was a… it was a.. it was an acute ward, that had just got a new ward manager.  The idea of ward managers had just been decided and for some reason, having a new ward manager, meant that there weren’t enough chairs, there weren’t enough cutlery, there wasn’t enough salt cellars, that, that, that, that the tomato sauce was dispensed out of the vinegar dispenser, and things like that [laughs].  But anyway, there weren’t enough chairs, and, and so that every, every evening in the day room, somebody had to sit on the floor, and I got fed up with this after a while, and I… I was on a section, I got fed up with this after a while and I said, `I’m going to go and sit on this chair`, and I was just sitting on, on it and this bloke walked in, a patient, and he says, `You’re sitting in my chair` [laughs].  I said, `What do you mean, your chair?`, and he said, `That’s where I sit, and you’re just a scruffy…` you know, because I, I’d… only just been admitted and I was in, in a, not a very good physical state and my clothes and everything, and he was, you know, he gave me a real… boring out, and I said, `Well… what do you mean?` and he said, `I want to sit there`, and, and so he pushed me here, out of the chair and I was knocked onto the floor and I thought, I can’t take this any more, I went off… and so, I dashed out the ward, the door was open… right across the garden, down the bottom of the… by, by the ward, across the field, over the fence… and right the way round and come back again, and I, I, I… I used to kind of protest about being, about what he said and the fact that I’d been on, on section, and, and I remember, it just reminded me that when I was on… when I was… in… Elgar ward, at West Park, not West Park, Epsom District Hospital, which is the admission unit that I went to when West Park Hospital closed, and they put me on a section and it was one of the first times that I’d ever been on a section and, what I did every day, for a week, was… what’s… abscond, I suppose is the word, at lunch time, because there’s two hours between lunch and OT.  OT started at two, and lunch finished, finished at quarter past twelve, so what I would do, is I would have my lunch and then I would go, and I would see how far I could walk, away from Epsom District Hospital Psychiatric Unit, and get back by two o’clock, and… as I say, I did that every day for a week, and… pointless [laughs].  But I mean it’s just… it’s just… it was just a protest and nobody… I mean it’s the first time I’ve probably told anybody about it, but it’s just the, the way I felt for myself of protesting, the fact that I was on a section, and why I was on a section, and I… I… I was quite responsible enough to be allowed out and I would go and come back and never tell anybody, and I did it…’
 
`[Laughs]’
 
`So those are some of the kind of… to me, a kind of… some, some of the kind of irritations of being on, on, on a section.  It’s not so much that you’re going to get bashed up or mis-treated or whatever because you’re on a section, it’s just that you, you, you feel… you’re not in control, you’re being treated like a little kid when it’s not necessary.’
 
`And… typically in the sort of… more recent admissions, they’d be short… they’d be quite short?’
 
`Yes.  Well about six… about, up to six weeks.  I mean so long… I mean normally I would now… I would now go in or spend… three or four days kind of getting my equal… equilibrium back, then, then probably, a couple of weeks, well medication is… adjust it, I… the medication would be too… too heavy and then it would be reduced, and then, if there were any kind of… other things that need to be sorted out, and that’s it really.  But by and large, I mean by and large, my experience of… acute ward care, in the… in the last ten, ten or fifteen years, has been that nothing happens apart from the fact that I… that I lose my equilibrium.  I’m helped to regain my equilibrium through playing around with medication. I’d sit around and do nothing for two or three weeks and I’d go back into, into the situation that I, that, that I was in before.’
 
`Right. And what, what’s it like picking up from where you left off?’
 
`Well it gets increasingly difficult I think, and that’s partly to do with… do with, with getting older.  I mean I think it’s… it’s… that it does take quite a lot of energy to, to, to pick yourself up again, and… to get back… out there, and to, to, to pick up the kind of threads of the… of the work and the activities that, that you’d been doing before, before you go in, and… it’s… it… it takes, it… it, it disrupts me more than it used to.  I mean I think, maybe fifteen, twenty years ago, I, I could kind of go through that process and, and recover fairly, fairly quickly, and now I think it, it takes me, much longer maybe six months to fully recover after I’ve been, after I’ve been discharged, so that, so… it isn’t an… it isn’t an easy… easy, easy… project.  I mean I think one of the things that, that, that, that is better now than used to be for me, is that I don’t tend to lose my… my social networks.  I mean most of my… most of my friends, closest friends are also people who use mental health services, that are survivors and so, they’re… they’re quite… used to and quite, quite… happy with, with the idea, you know, about my… my, my kind of… having, having a crisis and, recovering from a crisis, whereas part, when, when more of my friends were so called ordinary people, I quite often lost friends, or, or disrupt my… my, my networks became disrupted because people actually couldn’t get their head around the fact that, that, that I’d suddenly changed and become, you know out of control and whatever, and, and… so, so that’s a good thing.  I think something that, that… that… most people never consider in, in, in… mental health services is… how, how… how you… how you settle back into the community that you live in if you’ve exited… exited that community in a very dramatic way.  I mean those things are, I, I said to you earlier, you know, if, if…’
 
`Mmm…’
 
`…you made, drawn attention to yourself, you’ve made… you know, made a big scene of some kind, you’d disappear for six weeks, and you suddenly re-appear, how do you actually re-establish your, your credibility and how, how do you get to feel ok about people who must know, to some degree or other, what’s going on, and… and that’s… again, I think that I’m… I’m… I’m more used to that than I used… than I used to be, but it’s still a big… it’s still a problem, still a problem and, and a worry, and by and large, that’s never, I’ve never been asked what I feel about… being discharged and going back, it’s just, you know, it’s just assumed that… that I’m competent to do it.’
 
`Mmm.’
 
`I mean one of the things that, that… a major problem for me at the time, is that I usually trash my flat to some degree.  I mean I’m a very tidy person normally but I will, I will, I will… you know, disrupt things.  I won’t smash things up but I’ll disrupt things, so usually there’s a lot of clearing… cleaning and tidying to be done, when I, when I… when I’m discharged and that… that is quite difficult.  You spend the first two days after discharge cleaning up your place, when your… energy levels aren’t… haven’t been restored…’
 
`Mmm.’
 
`And it would be excellent if somebody actually offered you… assistance from the state to come in and help you tidy it, but I mean I’ve never been asked and… yeah.’
 
`Mmm.  Mmm.  Ok, when did you actually move to Cricklewood?’
 
`Where did I move to in Cricklewood?’
 
`No, when?’
 
`Oh when…’
 
`Yeah.’
 
`1983.  Yeah…’
 
`Right, and what… and before that you’d lived in a sort of succession of…’
 
`Yeah…’
 
`…bedsits?’
 
`Yeah, bed, bedsits and shared flats most, mostly in north west London, yeah, and, and I moved to Cricklewood in 1983, and… I suppose round about that time, I, I, I, I decided to give up trying to be a… a career person.  I, I mean… in 1981 I’d left John Menzies and I’d spent… the next couple of years doing bits and pieces of… jobs, and I kind of decided well, I’d… there’s no point, trying to go on having a career, why not do what I want to do, and one of the things that I’d always wanted to do, I suppose, was to try to… explain to people, that they’d got it wrong about what, so called mental illness was like, and what it was like to use mental health services, so that… you know, this had always been something that I’d, I’d felt strongly about, that people really didn’t understand, what it was like, what our experience was like, and so I decided that I was going to… going to try, to get involved in, in doing something along, along those lines, and I got involved with… a MIND association in Camden, and, and then… and about the same time started to get involved in the… two or three kind of survivor organisations that were, then existing in London, British Network for Alternatives to Psychiatry and the Campaign Against Psychiatric Oppression, and then that kind of led to setting up.. other organisations, in particular, Survivors Speak Out, and for a while, for a while, kind of a… until the… the end of the 1980s, from say eighty three to nineteen, to, to eighty nine, I was, I was… I was sort of combining that type of activity, trying to set up user… user action groups, with working with children, again because, I, I kind of managed to rehabilitate myself basically to work with children again, and one of the important things was that when I moved to Cricklewood, the… the… psychiatric, the, the psychiatric team that… I was in contact with, the new team, they basically said well we’ll do all we can, to help you get back to working with children, so I, I, I started doing voluntary work with children and then started working for an agency, so until, until about 1989 I was working for an agency and also doing this work with, with, with, with service user groups at the same time, and then, from, from about 1990 onwards, I started working freelance, earning money as, as a freelance mental health trainer.  So that was basically, how, how it happened.  I mean I suppose it, I suppose the big thing for me, leaving aside, whatever may have been achieved or not… by service user organisations, that I’d been attached with, is, is that… I was doing… something that used my experience in, in a positive way, so that up, up until… up until nineteen… the early nineteen eighties, basically I had part of my life which was totally hidden away and never spoken of, or spoken of very little.  After the early 1980s, I was actually using that part of my life in a positive and constructive way and actually ended up now, kind of earning my living by using my personal experience to teach other people, and that is, that, I mean I think that’s just extremely… liberating, and, and, and it’s made me feel a lot different about myself, that I’ve actually been able to take that experience, out of a cupboard and actually, look at it, and use it, in a completely different way, than, than, than, when I was, was, was… was using it, looking at it prior to that.  I mean that’s not to say, I haven’t got any more problems, but it means that the fact that I’ve got problems seems much, much different to me now, than it would have done, before I started coming out, so, so that’s… that’s… I mean it’s a… it’s, it’s a privilege in a way, to, you know, to, to have been… to have been able to… have, have the opportunity to do that.  I mean I think I’ve been very lucky actually, that I’d been a revolving door patient if you like, I mean I’d been in ten different psychiatric hospitals, in the last thirty odd years.  I’ve, I’ve had twenty something like admissions, but despite that, I’ve actually been able to work most of the time, when I’ve not been in hospital, and I’ve actually been able to do things that I… quite value doing.  Ok, there have been periods when I’ve been doing shit jobs, if you like, you know, cleaning, domestic cleaning, and you know, industrial temping, all that kind of thing, but I’ve also worked for ten… or fifteen years with pre-school children which I think in a way is remarkable that some, a man, with a psychotic illness, a major psychotic illness has been able to work with pre-school children for fifteen years and, I’ve been lucky ‘cause I really love doing it, and then I’ve been able, in the last fifteen years, to actually use my experience, of, of, of… mental distress and of using mental health services in a positive way as well so I’ve… I’ve been very, very lucky, particularly when you, you, you think that a large number of people, with a similar diagnosis to mine and with a similar history of using mental health services, never work, never work, and, and so you know, I’ve, I’ve been… I’ve been fortunate.  And then of course, being involved in the Service User Survivor Movement, has just made… meant, I’ve met tremendous people, you know, really, really tremendous people, and, and… that I suppose has been, been the best part, that, that I’ve met people, who, who, who are… have got very… similar experiences to mine.  I’ve met people who, who are thought by the majority of society to be in the dustbin, to be extremely strange, to be extremely frightening, and in actual fact, these people I’ve met, that I know that are friends of mine, are great people and some of them have made a really good contribution to the understanding of, of mental illness, mental distress, mental health problems, whatever you want to call it, and, and, and that’s… [plane in background] you know that, that in a way has… been, been, been very invigorating for me to, to… to actually be part of, of… [pause] well I suppose it’s part of the coming out of the closet really, it’s part of a group of people, coming out of a closet, in historical terms and, and you know that just happens to have coincided with my life time, and, and you know, I think it’s… I think it’s… I think I’m fortunate, because you know, fifty years… if I’d been born fifty years, before that, I would never have, I wouldn’t be a revolving door patient, I would never have got out of the asylum.  I would have gone into the asylum and I would have sTayd into the asylum, and, and, and that would have been it.  It would have been a full stop basically, as far as… my life is concerned, so you know…’
 
`Sorry… just… we’ve got about five minutes to go if we…’
 
`Ok…’
 
`…stop here, so… I mean is there anything that else that you feel you want, you want to… talk about, that we haven’t covered?’
 
`I mean I suppose, I suppose that… [pause] I suppose that… I… I do feel that I’m a survivor.  I mean if someone was to ask, ask me… how do you define yourself in terms of, this experience, that we’re discussing, I, I would… I think still say that I’m a mental health system survivor, and I mean that implies that I am surviving, rather than I feel that I’ve survived and it’s over, I think I shall go on surviving, but I do… feel that while on the one hand, psychiatric system, the asylum, mental health services in the community, all the rest of it, have helped and supported me, but in the end, they don't meet my needs and haven’t met my needs over, over the course of thirty odd years so that, that when I, when I look at it, I’m still surviving a system, an obstacle course, that I’m still actually trying to use a system that I know, isn’t going to meet my needs, and I think that’s one of the… one of the difficulties when you, when you have to use a system, when you're dependent on a system, over a long period of time, and when you actually know that that system, because of the way it’s, it’s set up, cannot meet your needs, but that actually puts you in, in, in an invidious situation.  I mean I feel, I feel that… I suppose, as a revolving door patient, if that’s what I am, I feel that mental health services have actually been quite good at getting me through crises, I mean I’ve gone from six month admissions to six week admissions and that basically, and that in terms of getting me up off my knees and out on the street again, the acute ward does quite well, but what it doesn’t do, is help me prevent these things happening, until recent years it hasn’t appeared to be interested in that at all, and it doesn’t actually help me to come to terms with my experience.  Not only my psychotic experience, which it doesn’t appear to be interested in but also my experience of being a mental health service user being mentally ill in the eyes of society and what does it mean, in, in, in terms of who I am and who I might become, and, and that seems to me to be the… the big problem with psychiatry.  It’s alike…it’s a polo mint, there’s a kind of big hole in the middle, and so ultimately that is why, I would say that I’m a survivor.  I mean I’m very glad that I’m still around, thirty three years after entering the mental health system and I think that, that… if it hadn’t been for some of the help I’ve got there, I wouldn’t be alive, but ultimately I don’t think the system is working, for me or for other people in the way that it could do and that’s why, other… whatever other people say, I am still a survivor of the mental health system.’
 
`Ok.  Thank you very much.’
 
`Thank you.’
 
[End of DVC Pro Tape 4 of 4 – End of VHS Tape 1 of 1]