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activism | alcohol | homelessness | hospital | job loss | male | negative attitudes of service providers | sectioned | seeing things differently | self knowledge/learning/growth | sense of self | statutory mental health services (-) | stigma/discrimination | suicide | taking control | voluntary mental health services
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Published: February 2006 This story shows how volunteering, employment and activism can be important to recovery. I spent between 1990 and 1997 in and out of hospitals, which was a complete shock as up until 1990 I hadn’t had any problems you would notice. Yeah stress, anxiety normal stuff, and then in 1990 everything kind of collapsed; I lost my wife, my home, my job, my friends and ended up in a sheriff court and was sectioned to a psychiatric hospital. It was a huge shock since none of it was part of the game plan at all. It is an unfriendly system when you get thrown into it, especially when you are sectioned; no one really spends any time telling you what's going on. I think I just coped as best I could with that first period by checking out of everything and closing myself off and not talking to anyone. This was due to the prejudices that were around at work and with friends, it was a case of just cut yourself off from anything that was the former you. I did that for about 4 or 5 years. I just accepted what my psychiatrist said, “You are never going to work again and you’re going to have these problems for life.” I tookn the view of “get on and accept it.” I just accepted that I was going to spend the rest of my life in and out of hospital, and when I wasn’t in hospital I’d be attending mental health groups and seeing nurses and doctors and so on. I felt, ok, I'm not part of everything else that is going on so the only safe, secure environment I had was hospital. What changed my mind was that I’d had two or three suicide attempts. I quite often jokingly said that I was getting fed up with wanting to be dead and waking up in the morning not dead. I had to make a benefit claim for Disability Living Allowance and I needed a supporting letter from my psychiatrist. In black and white he wrote, “This person has severe and enduring mental health problems. They will never be able to cope independently on their own, will need frequent hospital admissions, will need to be on medication for the rest of their life and chances of improvement in their condition are very slim.” I have to say, that pissed me off!! So I have this letter that says, “Yeah the only thing you have to look forward to in life is retirement if you make it that far.” I got really angry and felt like I’m not having someone write me off. And that broke the pattern and started my process of recovery. With no hospital, however, I was lost. I started to spend every day in a pub from 11 o’clock in the morning and would come out at 11 o’clock at night. By 2 o’clock in the afternoon I had no conscious memory of anything. It was pretty much the same dead end. But I stopped drinking and I stopped going into hospital. Two years on I had not been in hospital and my head started clearing as well. At this time I went into a couple of mental health training projects that were extremely patronising and not very helpful. I wanted to get back to a normal life. I used to work in the civil service had a good career. I was pretty much told that because I had a mental health problem I’d probably to have to drop my expectations. One of the things my GP said that has stayed with me and spurned me on was, “People who are articulate will struggle to survive a mental health system because the mental health system can’t cope with that, anything that you do, you will find more barriers than actual help.” It often feels to me that the mental health system pigeonholes people and so long as people fit that model it’s fine. Anyone that doesn’t want to be put into the pigeonhole becomes a “difficult person.” It’s like it’s not the system that’s wrong, or it’s not the system that’s inflexible, it’s you, the client, who is inflexible and unable to fit into the mental health system’s very small square box. I felt truly patronised. I channelled my anger by doing two things. Firstly, I joined a mental health organisation, got on to the board of directors and became chairman. Secondly, myself and a group of three or four other people decided what we were going to do was set up an advice project. None of us had ever set up an advice project before! None of us had a clue what we were doing! We didn’t know how to go about getting funding for anything but in the end we managed to set up an organisation in the West End. We walked into places and said, “We want to do such and such, give us a building,” “We want to do such and such, give us a computer,” “We want you do such and such, give us some money for training.” We just went and told people what we wanted until they got so annoyed with us that they actually gave us what we’d asked for. I guess if you haven’t got anything to lose you can have a brass neck and be incredibly up front. We were given a building, some equipment, a small amount of funding and we set up an advice project in our local area. We just set off with this plan, and its like one of those kind of mad things that you just talk about in pubs like, “We should do such and such!” We thought if we could do this then we could change things. Here I had a couple of doctors writing me off, the benefits agency had stopped assessing my mental health, and then I was helping to build a successful organisation that is still running to this day. That gave me a huge amount of self confidence. On the one hand my psychiatrist was saying, “What you are doing? You can’t do that.” And on the other hand there is me saying, “I’m going to do it, just try and stop me then!!” I’d got into this system where I felt very insecure, insignificant and frightened, but in the past I’d always been an individual who was going to do it my way and stuff everyone else. Working together with a group of friends it was like, “Ok, I am small and insignificant on my own, I’m big headed and that is going to get me into trouble, but if I work together with other people we can succeed.” This is what my recovery journey has given me. I think before I became unwell one of the things that really scared me was feeling vulnerable and insecure. I now see my experience of being insecure and vulnerable as being strengths, as now I can tackle them. I think the big thing is that it is very easy to put yourself down and its so easy to get into the mind set of ‘I’m worthless.’ I think now I'm much happier than I have ever been, and that what makes me what I am today are the things that I went through. It might look totally black, and you might think this is as bad as it can get, but don’t put yourself down any further. If it is as bad as it can get then you can take all the risks you want! The more you are prepared to take a risk on something, the more chances you have that things will work out! This story was written based on this individuals interview for the SRNs narrative research project entitled, 'Recovering Mental Health in Scotland'. More information about the project can be found in the Narrative Research Project section of our website www.scottishrecovery.net. If you’d like to share your own experience of recovery please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. 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Story Tags
activism community/socialising/inclusion coping strategies creativity depression employment (+) exercise female hospital male medication medication (-) peer support (informal) and befriending seeing things differently self knowledge/learning/growth self management sense of self support from family support from friends support from mental health professionals supportive spouse/partner taking control talking therapies voluntary mental health services volunteering Story disclaimer
The stories presented here are for information only. They are meant to inspire hope and show that recovery can and does happen. The stories highlight various examples of recovery and we do not advocate any of these experiences as the ‘right’ way to recover. Recovery is an individual and unique process, each person must decide for himself or herself what will work for them. Please carefully consider any decisions you make about your own recovery and consult with someone you trust if you feel unsure. See our Submit Your Thoughts pages for details on how to submit a story to us or you can contact us.
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