The Reason For My Silence

I've been a fairly regular blogger since I started this blog in June 2008. I don't write a post every day, but there is rarely a break of more than a couple of days, but regular visitors to this blog will have noticed a long period where I haven't added anything, even about my knitting.

The reason is that I continued to go downhill and I got to the stage where I became suicidal. I couldn't find a reason to carry on with life and even though I didn't actually do anything to harm myself, it became the foremost thing in my mind. Fortunately, I was still capable of doing the sensible thing so I went to see my GP who was so concerned that he referred me to the psychiatric staff at one of the local hospitals and I ended up becoming what is laughingly called an 'informal' patient at one of our psychiatric hospitals which means that I went in voluntarily rather than being 'sectioned' under the Mental Health Act. The local Mental Health Foundation Trust has seven psychiatric hospitals and which one you end up in depends on where you live within the area that the Trust covers.

So, I have been without access to a computer at a time when I probably had more material for the blog than I could possibly use, although whether anything that I wrote during the early days of my incarceration would make any sense is somewhat debatable. Anyway, I have been granted my first bit of home leave and tonight is going to be the first night at home for a few weeks. I have to go back to the hospital for Ward Round tomorrow, when my Consultant will obviously want to know how I have coped and whether I can be allowed to spend a few more days at home without resorting to doing myself any harm.

This has been a somewhat interesting experience for me because although I have suffered from severe depression for 11 years, and I have felt suicidal at one period in the past, I have never had such intimate dealings with the mental health services offered by the NHS. During this encounter I have met some really interesting people, some nice (including a paranoid schizophrenic who was a real pleasure to be on a ward with) and some who really frightened me and who I really wouldn't want to meet on the street. One thing that I have learned is that one of the worst places for encountering discrimination towards people with mental health problems can be a psychiatric hospital, and this discrimination comes from the staff. I have encountered a few really good mental nurses and a lot who were possibly more 'mental' than the patients that they were supposed to be looking after, and I was looked after for a few hours when I was initially admitted by a doctor who was incredibly kind and compassionate at a time when I was extremely vulnerable and completely overwhelmed by everything after having been left in limbo for about nine hours while the psychiatric staff at the hospital to which I was referred by my GP seemed incapable of doing the simplest things (such as ensuring that I was fed and watered; I had nothing to eat or drink in all that time). He made me a cup of tea and got me some toast and did all he could to put me at my ease while he took a detailed history and carried out a full medical examination. If he continues to exhibit this compassion as he progresses with his training as a psychiatrist then he will make a consultant whose patients will consider themselves very fortunate to be in his care.

I need some time to get my thoughts into focus again, but once that has happened I will write a series of posts about my experience and what was good and bad about it all. One thing that I have already decided is that I want to make sure that my voice is heard and that I want to do something to help ensure that those of us with mental health problems don't get 'treated by numbers' instead of being treated as an individual with rights and feelings that need to be taken into consideration in our treatment.