Tackling The Mental Health Minefield Part 8 - OT? What OT?

(This post continues the story from Tackling The Mental Health Minefield Part 7 - The GTN Story)

Having to spend a long period in hospital, and these days anything more than a week can be considered a long time, means that there can be a lot of empty hours to fill. When that hospital is a mental hospital then one can expect to be mobile and the empty hours can seem interminable. Mental illness can make it difficult to concentrate, or to be able to do something for a long period of time. My experience of mental illness is depression and I have tried many things to deal with the hours of the day. I read, I study, I do crossword puzzles, I knit, I do embroidery and I make cards. Sometimes I can't do any of these things for more than an hour at a time and sometimes I can spend all day on one of these activities as long as I don't encounter any problems. Problems are very difficult to deal with and so I end up putting whatever it is I am doing aside until I am feeling a little better and can deal with the problem.

During my stay in hospital, life soon settled into the routine so loved of such organisations. Breakfast would be served at about 8am, meds and obs at 9am, lunch served at about 12.15pm, meds at 1pm, dinner at about 5.15pm, meds at 6pm and night-time meds at 10pm. I expect that it is pretty much the same in any hospital.

Visiting hours were 2pm to 5pm and 6.30pm to 8.30pm. The difference between visiting hours in a mental hospital and an ordinary hospital is that there are very few visitors; most patients have no-one visit them from their admission to the day that they are discharged.

So what do patients do during the rest of the empty hours in a day? Well, there are of course ward rounds, but while these may take a considerable time during the day, the patient only attends ward round for a limited time. Most of my visits to see the consultant psychiatrist and whoever else was in the room (see Tackling the Mental Health Minefield Part 6 - Throwing The Christian To The Lions) were no longer than about 10-20 minutes twice a week.

While I was on the admissions ward there was nothing organised for us to fill the empty hours. As is common to most accounts of time sent on mental wards, we were expected to spend most of our time in the communal areas. These were the TV room and the dining area/day room. During my time on the admissions ward I went in the TV room twice; both occasions being for ward meetings. The dining area/day room had tables and chairs sufficient for 12 people, but the ward could take up to 16 patients, which meant that if the ward was full it was impossible for everyone to be able to sit down together at meal times or during other periods of the day. So I spent some time in the dining area/day room particularly when I had made myself a hot drink or for meals, sometimes I would read a book or doing sudoku puzzles. I had always found sudoku puzzles impossible to do even though I understood the requirements for completing them because I have number dyslexia. However, one of the patients that I was on the admissions ward with spent time explaining how to do them and I became hooked. Most of the rest of the time I spent in my room trying to catch up on sleep that I wasn't getting at night or reading. There were no organized activities for us to take part in.

When I was on the second ward, there was an activity semi-organised for each morning (Monday to Friday) between the hours of 10-11am but these rarely took place. The two which did seem to be regular events were a session of creative writing on a Tuesday morning and a group psychology session on a Thursday morning.

The first Tuesday that I was on the ward (I had been on the ward for five days then and in hospital for two weeks) two occupational therapists approached me when I was in the main corridor of the ward walking from the laundry room with my arms full of the washing that I had just done, and tried to get me to join in with the creative writing. I took my newly laundered clothes back to my room and went to the OT room to wait for the OTs to round up any other patients who could be dragged along. They were unsuccessful, so there I was sitting in a room with two OTs and all they could suggest to me was that I might like to write about what had led to me being in hospital. Now maybe I was just being over-sensitive, but I really didn't think that was a very good thing for me to be doing at that time. So I thanked them very much and left to go back to my room to read my book.

I was absent from the ward on the following Thursday morning as a result of being on my first attempt at home leave. I arrived back on the ward at lunch time so I missed the group psychology session. The following week however, I was persuaded to join three other patients from the ward and one of the nurses at the group psychology session and spent an hour away from the ward with one of the psychologists and his trainee psychologist. Each of the patients were given time to talk about how they ended up on the ward, the other three having been present at the previous week's session they went first and then it was my turn. I was asked a number of questions which I have to admit I answered only briefly and then I was asked about my depression and how long I had been suffering from it and how I had ended up in hospital. I answered at length and what I had to say somewhat surprised the other patients who had no idea that I had been suffering for so long or that this was my first admission to hospital.

Then we began to talk about life on the ward and I raised the subject of the 'protected hour' that we were supposed to have everyday between 11am and lunch. As this is going to be the subject of another post in this series I won't go into too much detail here, but from being someone who pretty much kept to myself on the ward although I did talk with a number of the other patients, I suddenly found that I had become a spokesman for not only those patients at the group psychology session but also those who weren't.

So, at the end of this post I go back to the subtitle that I used. OT? What OT? I know that some things that traditionally come under the title of occupational therapy involve cost and money is something that seems to be in short supply in mental health services, but the significant lack of anything that could be termed as 'helpful' in making the empty hours pass more quickly for the patients was alarming. The wards had televisions, and a small supply of books, but nothing much else. The result was that some patients spent most of the time in their rooms and socialised only at meal times. It is probable that the nurses wrote up their notes on the patients on each shift and commented that the patients didn't seem to do much, but it has to be said that there really wasn't anything to do. I would have loved to be able to do some knitting, but knitting needles were not allowed on the ward. I understand that they could be used as a weapon if used in public areas, but if I was to knit in my room and return the knitting to the staff when I had finished for the time being would certainly have helped me considerably.

I was lucky: I was only in hospital for a month but by the time that I left I was desperate to do some knitting or something other than read a book and do sudoku puzzles. As far as I am concerned this is an area what definitely needs something done about it. I know that some patients probably wouldn't want to partake in anything but there are definitely some who could almost certainly be helped considerably if there was something to help to pass the time in an environment that is not always conducive to improving one's mental health.

Lost Weekend

I have almost completed my first weekend at home since I left hospital and it hasn't been too bad although I haven't really achieved much.

Yesterday saw me going to collect my new toy and then trying it out. Today has mostly been spent sleeping. It wasn't intentional, it just happened. I woke early, about 6am, listened to the rain and promptly went back to sleep. I woke for a second time at about 10am, got myself something to eat, took my morning medication, listened to the rain and went back to bed (it was warm and cosy) and promptly went back to sleep again. I woke again in a somewhat confused state to find that it was dark outside and a quick check of my watch showed that it was fast approaching 5pm. Within a few minutes I could hear the rain starting again.

This means that I haven't done anything very productive this weekend, but at least I seem to have managed to be occupied in such a way that I haven't allowed the depression to take a hold on me. That has to be my goal over the next month or so and I am trying to ensure that I have as many things to do as are necessary to stop me having time to just sit and think. Unless I need to, that is. I am trying to catch up with an OU course that started while I was in hospital and that I have only been able to work on during this last week. It's just a short course, so that makes it more difficult to make up the four weeks that I wasn't working on the material.

The course is one of the OU's short creative writing courses, in this case Start Writing Fiction. I'm not sure that I have it in me to write a novel, but I am very interested in Creative Writing (it may even be why I started this blog) having spent so much of my working life employed in writing reports based on research and analysis of data. Fortunately, writing comes fairly easily to me (except when I am really badly depressed) and I have a fair grasp on the English language so finding words to express myself is fairly easy. If I'm analysing things as I write this, it probably also explains why so many of my posts are quite long.

So next week in between visits to my GP (Monday), to a psychologist (Tuesday) and to see the Home Treatment Team (probably Friday, but it's my call), I shall be spending much time in the library working on the course material and preparing my first TMA which is due next Friday, although my tutor has given me a week's extension because of starting the course late. Why the library? Well, if I'm there I find that there are less distractions to stop me getting on with the work than there would be at home. And to ensure that this all happens as it is supposed to I shall make sure that I get an early night tonight, make sure that my alarm is set so that I get up in good time to get myself dressed and ready for my appointment with my GP and that I pack my bag with computer and books so that I can head off to the library straight from the surgery.

I am so determined to try to ensure that I never again get into the state that I was in a few weeks ago, so I am going to make sure that I plan out the week ahead with all the things that I need to do making sure that there is never too much for any one day and that no days are left with nothing to achieve leaving me with too much time to think about my depression. I've done it in the past (I think that was what I was doing when I was working full-time, and studying for a degree at the same time) and I am sure that I can do it again.

And one other thing has been buoying me up over the last few days; the fabulous response that I have had to 'Tackling the Mental Health Minefield' and the huge increase in visitors to this blog. The next instalment is half drafted and will be appearing on a computer near you tomorrow.

I'm Going To Try Writing Every Day

I'm feeling guilty. I shouldn't really because not writing to this blog isn't something that I should be guilty about, but somehow I do. As each day has passed without me being able to write something I have become more frustrated with myself and it has probably added to my feeling low.

So this evening I have decided that I am going to try to write something everyday. Sometimes the posts will be short I have no doubt, but I need to make myself write even when I am feeling down because writing is one of the things that has helped me over the last nine months. And if I am going to make the best of the courses in Creative Writing that I am going to study with the OU, I need to get myself into the habit of writing something every day.

I will be honest and say that I'm not at all sure what I will write about, but then I have never really planned anything that I have written to this blog before, so there won't be any change there. But I will promise one thing. I will not keep telling you how bad I am feeling; however, I may well tell you what I am doing to try to raise my spirits and they do need raising at the moment.

I have a post half written; it is something that is quite different from anything that I have written before and its content may well prove to be quite controversial with some people, but I am entitled to my point of view and this is the only place that I have in which to put it forward. So I shall polish this half-written post over the next few days and if I am reasonably happy with it, then it will appear here. It won't be earth-shattering, but it will question the way that some people think and why they think this way.

Anyway, I need to say thank you to all of you who have kept faith with me during my relative silence over the last few weeks, and your comments and messages have meant a lot to me in my darkness. As the saying goes, normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.