Chris Newton - a tribute

A good friend has died, and how I feel about it is nobody’s business but my own. But the fact that he was a client of mental health services, on and off, for over forty years, yet managed to transform his life during his last twenty years is something that should be both acknowledged and celebrated. As his physical health declined, his mental state and that of many around him improved for the better. If asked for an explanation he would have named Jesus. For me, a non-believer but I hope an observant outsider, it was the church as a community which provided much of the answer.

We were unlikely friends, as different as chalk and cheese; he was from a working-class background with little formal education and had become a renowned biker; I’m middle class, over-educated and a believer in walking as the only proper means of movement! What we shared was a history of confinement. He often left the door of his flat open, so did I. He claimed it was to be welcoming to visitors - I once used that explanation too. But really it was a fear of not being able to get out of the door. What forged a connection between us however was a willingness to learn new things, and that requires an increasing openness towards others. It is the lack of such a capacity or willingness amongst those in mental distress, and perhaps their helpers too, which may account for the low success rate of mental health services.

Chris was in his early-fifties when we met in 2006 and never expected to reach sixty, he’d spent a total of twenty-five years either in prison or other secure environments - once sentenced to twelve years for aggravated assault, serving eight, five of which had been in Dartmoor. Son of Sergeant Robert ‘Tiger’ Newton, late of the Indian Army and sometime policeman, who installed discipline with his fists, Chris found himself on psychiatric drugs whilst still a child, diagnosed schizophrenic as a young man, and until he became a Christian, drank heavily and used street drugs. Workers were still telling him he would never live independently in the community up to a year before he achieved precisely that.

We first met at a regular social activity organised by the Community Care Trust (now absorbed into the charity Step One) when he moved to Teignmouth in south Devon. He hardly spoke at first and would often sit in a corner with his back to the rest of the group. Then one day he surprised me. Leafing through some photos he’d just picked-up from the printers, he mumbled something about a church event he had been to, saying: ‘If you don’t give, you’ll get nothing back’. I remember the first time he invited me to his flat. After ten minutes or so of intense talk he apologised and said he’d have to stop. I assumed it was because of the emotional nature of what we were talking about, but I was quite wrong, it was because he was not used to talking, full stop. The muscles that make speech needed a rest! Soon however he was talking to anyone, throughout the day.

Within a year or so of living independently in the community, our conversations on the street would be regularly interrupted by locals, with no connection to the world of mental health, who would enquire after his wellbeing. At first his life centred around the Baptist church, later he found greater acceptance with the Church of England. (On a practical level, Chris was often preoccupied at this time by how much he should cover-up, or not, the tattoos from his biker days as ‘Chopper’ Newton!) To me, his spirituality seemed to be all about letting go of that ‘preoccupation with self’ that comes with chronic mental distress. Once you have got yourself together you can start being of use to others. The writer Karen Armstrong argues that the spiritual is making others, or other things, the central focus of your life, allowing transcendent experiences which go beyond our usually limited perception of others, guided by what seems a ‘golden rule’ of all faiths - doing to others as you would have them do to you. Inevitably there came a point when Chris felt, perhaps for the first time in his life, the frustrations of giving more than he was getting back. After all, his God was a spirit within people, not an otherworldly presence looking down, and clearly not everyone felt that.

Early Good Friday morning 2009 saw us sitting in a bus shelter sharing our frustration at how, as we changed, others didn’t seem to want to follow, in particular two of our peers who lived just a stone’s throw away. One was clearly disabled by the system of care he had received over thirty years, the impact of which was noticed in the odd moments when his previous personality broke through. The other person just seemed to be on a ‘single track’, blocking-out anything that challenged or contradicted a set pattern of behaviour. Why wouldn’t they change? What had we done differently? It didn’t seem to be about a lack of capacity to act differently, rather that unwillingness to learn new things. An unwillingness to test or experiment, to risk and be prepared to look a fool from time to time. For example, Chris explained he had recently been through a bit of a crises, but hadn’t thought about drink at all, but a little later when all was well and he was socialising in a pub, he’d rapidly became agitated and had to leave.

Whilst he found that being supportive of other people with mental health problems was a strain, he felt he was much more effective working with the religious charity Prospects (and later the breakaway group Count Everyone In) which supported people with learning disabilities. Indeed, he had me join a sponsored walk and attend, for the first time in many years, a religious service which he helped put together specifically for people with various disabilities, the first of its kind to be held at Exeter cathedral. He also worked for a while with MENCAP, going into Doctor’s surgery’s and educating them on how to communicate more effectively with people with learning disabilities. Chris described himself as schizophrenic (for which he accepted a moderate level of medication) but regarded it as largely a thing of the past, more pressing were his learning difficulties, for now he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt he could learn a lot more. Nonetheless, he knew that it was his relatively minor ‘learning difficulties’ that allowed him to connect with, and be useful to, those with major learning difficulties. Furthermore, for the boundaries are always blurred, to help some others with ‘learning disabilities’.

Early on in our friendship he determined that he should finally learn to read and write in order to better study the Bible. More surprisingly still, he chose the ancient method of copying out those passages he had come to know from hearing them spoken. About a year into the enterprise (self-taught, but with the occasional help of a number of us who just happened to be around at the time) he became conscious of the quality of language in different versions of the bible. I found myself in the somewhat surreal situation of sitting with him in our favourite café trying to explain 16th century history and the appearance of English translations - he’d already worked-out for himself that it was the language of the King James that he wanted. This went hand in hand with his learning the basics of Makaton, to better aid communication with those with learning difficulties/ disabilities and his inclination to learn to draw. Now, by the time I met him he only had sight in his left eye, with the limits in depth perception that brings!

We undertook a number of trips together, two of which come to mind as important. First, in 2008 we visited Broadhempston Community Woodland. Transport was provided by a local mental health worker and as we skirted the edge of Channing’s Wood (an ‘open’ prison) Chris commented: ‘That’s one I was never in!’ From the start he enjoyed the undeveloped new woodland planted just twenty-five years previously. As we set off to climb Beacon Hill it soon became clear that he knew more about the trees than we did. For between spells of confinement he had clocked-up a total of twelve years as a casual agricultural labourer, migrating with the seasons on his bike from Cornwall to Scotland. The woodland was being developed as resource for people with all kinds of disabilities and disadvantages, but Chris was quick to point out that the rules and regulations that come with any money intended to help the disabled, often leads to the spoiling of the very experience on offer.

The other trip that sticks in my mind was to Paignton in 2009, for it seemed to mark some kind of transition. It was when we were sat having a meal in a relaxed ordinary way that I realised how unique it was for either of us to be comfortable enough to sit in a crowded café for forty minutes. There really is a thing called normality and those who have it often take it for granted so much, they come to deny its very existence.

Also, in 2009 Chris came top of the list for an allotment after a year of waiting. The location was between a housing project and an industrial estate, but its situation was different. Lifting one’s gaze from the ground, you could see to the southern part of the estuary, look to the west and you could see all the way up the valley to the moor, and an ever-changing horizon. He cultivated with a success that bemused his neighbours and quite without the orderliness that preoccupied them. It was on the few occasions when I helped-out, that, even more than being with him, one could see, spread out in front of one, almost like a map, his chaotic mind. Patches of temporary order emerging from place to place within a disorganised whole. Yet the whole was hugely productive, and produced flower and vegetable displays at a number of events. Most notably his displays for the annual flower festival of St. Michael’s church in July 2009 and 2010, displays which were conspicuous because they lacked the formality of style of all the others. They were personal and intimate, one depicted a flowing river, another; photographs of those people with learning disabilities who had helped on the allotment.

But Chris had another life of which I knew little. In time he became a frequent visitor to Bristol where his ‘family’ lived. He had lost contact with his remaining blood relatives many years before, but formed an attachment to two women, one of whom he came to think of as his mother, the other his daughter. I was lucky enough to attend the wedding of the latter and hear her account of Chris’s life since they had met over twenty years earlier.

He also had a life of physical illness. He had suffered from bowel cancer and had a total of six operations over the years, and also underwent various other invasive procedures for related complications. There came a point when he decided enough was enough and began to refuse most of the treatment being offered. He lived for more years than he expected. He’d fixated on sixty as a target age to be reached for several years before he actually achieved it. I myself felt the need to start writing this tribute before his sixtieth – he has died at the age of seventy-two.

For about five years from around 2010 we would talk for an hour or so two or three times a week in a local cafe. As he became more articulate, I demanded more of him. I watched as he became aware of how others, and therefore himself, had grossly underestimated his capacity for intellectual growth. I didn’t find it easy that he framed nearly all his talk in religious terms, over and over I pointed out that I disagreed and that somehow if he wanted to spread a message he had to take-on the reality of non-belief amongst so many of the community. Just as he’d learnt to control the anger that had got him into so many fights in the past, so now he learnt to temper his desire to spread the word to anyone who would listen.

In time his spiritual life deepened further, through the Church of England he connected with the Society of St Francis. In May 2018 he was ‘professed’ into the Franciscan Third Order. Now I don’t know what that means, but I know it meant everything to Chris.

Christopher Robert Newton 1952-2025

Note to self

Rational thought, followed by deliberate conscious intention, is such a weak tool for bringing about action - let alone change - that I have to carry instructions to myself on a cue card!

I doubt the below will mean anything to you, but then it’s not meant to!

(The more astute may realise some of these half sentences are cribs and at least one lifted in its entirety.)

Never say never again - inpatient 2016

The view of Haytor from the Haytor Unit, a view I'd first seen 22 years before when it was called the Edith Morgan Centre (did the 45 mile version of Ten Tors in 1977.) (photo by Nick Hewling)

Luckily I was transferred to the old Cypress Independent Hospital within the week (Community Care Trust as was.) (photo by Nick Hewling)

Some argument about Wordsworth, probably me saying something about always read the original and remember the context - wild daffodils, between the edge of the mere and the tree line. (photo by Nick Hewling)

Not difficult to scare oneself (photo by Nick Hewling)

Still had to serve-out 28 days, part of deal, still cheers! (selfie by Nick Hewling)

 

Christmas On The Ward

...I finished my essay on: ‘Is mental health a valid concept?‘ and returned to work. I’d only been in hospital for about ten days. Work was okay for a couple of weeks, and I was free of those experiences that had seemed to place me on the edge between reality and psychosis for a few hours at a time. We had a visit to the local prison which fascinated me; the kitchens, the hospital wing, being shut in a cell for a few minutes - my overriding memory was of the warders whose lives were dominated by their keys. We were introduced to different ‘nursing models’ and different wards where they were supposedly used. I attended an out-patient clinic, my talks with the consultant seemed to be all about medication, when and how I should reduce it. Then one night the snow came.

I was enthralled by it, I believed it was building higher and higher on the roof into a kind of tower. I decided to rearrange the flat. Move everything from the bedroom into the living room and vice versa. I took a couple of objects at a time from one room to the other, picking up some new ones for the return journey. Soon the scene became totally disorganised - like the inside of my head. I remember a walk at night, following street lights, trying to make sense of their patterns. Once I saw Bill (who two years earlier had been my therapist and was now one of my nurse tutors) standing in the shadows, he didn’t do anything but it was good to know he was looking out for me. I can’t remember the events that led to my return to hospital, but I know I was taken there again by ambulance and for a while refused to get out. I was disorientated in time and space, physically uncoordinated, disassociated from my surroundings and recent events. It was then that I was sectioned for the first time (compulsorily detained under the mental health act - either because I posed a danger to myself or others). I was taken to ‘intensive therapy’ (a locked ward).

I found this first period of confinement claustrophobic, the ward was too hot, the windows fixed so as to only open a few inches, there was one living area and a corridor with five single rooms on each side. We ate with plastic cutlery, our belts were taken away. If you wanted a cigarette you had to ask for one at the nursing station and they would give you a light. In the first few days I learnt just how interactive live TV could be. You had to watch from a certain angle, and synchronise eye movements, but then the people on the screen could send you personal messages.

I was only there for a week or so. After a few days my mood began to fall and I was relatively normal for a while. In a more rational state you begin to remember basics truths - like the easiest and fastest way out of a prison is the reverse of the way you came in. Whilst physical means of escape present themselves at times - the real trick is to get those who wanted you in, to want you out. It was a long walk through the remaining snow to the new acute ward. The section was lifted about a week later, now I settled down to trying to get on with another set of strangers, staff and clients. I started to feel depressed. The ward had been recently renovated, the contrast with the rest of the hospital was striking. The staff seemed proud of it, anxious to keep it neat and tidy. Despite being aware on some level that it was longer-term changes in mood, coming from within me, that were in some way fundamental; I was prone to deny it, and think in terms of ‘fate’, or of sometimes being ‘surprised by joy’ and of course - of being in ‘control’ of my responses to life events.

But my mood continued to drop and my surroundings appeared grimmer and grimmer. The most depressing place I’ve ever seen in my years in the world of ‘mental health’, was the patient Snack Bar. It was in the basement, poorly ventilated, with low artificial lighting. The one place in the hospital patients could get tobacco. Through the gray mist, ghostly figures sat a stools, communicating only with themselves. A nightclub for the half-dead. To be outside was too cold, roaming around inside did nothing to lift the mood. I did manage once to get access to a full size billiard table for an hour or so, but it required getting someone to unlock several doors in order to get there. I slowed down, time slowed down. The consultant stopped the tranquillizers, and started me on an anti-depressant. (No one explained the basic facts; that they take about two weeks to start to work [anything else is environment or placebo] reaching their maximum impact after six weeks. If you haven’t improved by then - you may be amongst the 20% for whom they have no effect). I was not aware of the pills helping me, but I kept taking them. When I started to express suicidal thoughts I was sectioned again. Soon I was facing the prospect of spending Christmas on the ward.

The high point of the day was the arrival of Mary. She was one of the night staff and was the one person I seemed to be able to relax with and have a normal conversation. It was easier to settle down at night and get some sleep when she was there. The future looked awful, I’d never be able to hold down a job or maintain a relationship. I was defeated. As usual the TV was on all day, with nothing but news of the build-up to the Gulf War. The future was unbearable to think about - I could only look to the past. About a year before I had bought an audiotape of Laurie Lee reading some of his poetry. I thought of one entitled Boy In Ice:
　
O river, green and still,
By frost and memory stayed,
Your dumb and stiffened glass divides
A shadow and a shade.
In air, the shadow’s face
My winter gaze lets fall
To see beneath the stream’s bright bars
That other shade in thrall.
A boy, time-fixed in ice,
His cheeks with summer dyed,
His mouth, a rose-devouring rose,
His bird-throat petrified.
O fabulous and lost,
More distant to me now
Than rock-drawn mammoth, painted stag
Or tigers in the snow.
You stare into my face
Dead as ten thousand years,
Your sparrow tongue sealed in my mouth
Your world about my ears.
And till our shadows meet,
Till time burns through the ice,
Thus frozen shall we ever stay
Locked in this paradise.
　
Just before Christmas my father made the long journey to see me, baring gifts from my mother. He was supportive, as he always is. His apparent simple ability to endure never ceases to impress me. Something I am still trying to emulate. His being there reminded me for a while that there was a life outside the hospital. Christmas would have been tolerable if the staff had not decided to give us a party on the ward. Music, a DJ and disco lights for what seemed hours on end. Now I slowed down even more, spending as much time lying down as possible, I hadn’t the energy to kill myself anymore. I thought again of Laurie Lee and Twelfth Night:
　
No night could be darker than this night,
no cold so cold
as the blood snaps like a wire,
and the heart’s sap stills,
and the year seems defeated.
O never again, it seems, can green things run,
or sky birds fly,
or the grass exhale its humming breath
powered with pimpernels,
from this dark lung of winter.
Yet here are lessons for the final mile
of pilgrim Kings;
the mile still left when all have reached
their tether’s end: that mile
where the child lies hid.
　
(Mary came alone to my single room, knelt by the bed, put her head close to mine, and spoke for a few minutes. She took my hand, then stroked my arm; but it was with a lover’s touch, and it was enough - she gave me undeniable evidence that I was alive, and likeable).
　
For see, beneath the hand, the earth already
warms and glows;
for men with shepherd’s eyes there are
signs in the dark, the turning stars,
the lamb’s returning time.
Out of this utter death he’s born again,
his birth our saviour;
from terror’s equinox he climbs and grows,
drawing his finger’s light across our blood -
the sun of heaven, and the son of god.
　
Slowly my mood began to recover a little, I was taken off the section, but the increased suicide risk was not recognised by others. (At the lowest point of depression you do not have the energy or organisational ability to kill yourself, the greatest likelihood of an attempt comes before, and after). Three times I went to the bridge over the motorway ready to throw myself off. My stolen car was found by the police, but then my flat was burgled. One night I didn’t return to the hospital, the police arrived, put me in a cell for an hour or so whilst the duty psychiatrist was found, after which I was returned to the hospital. At one point I spent many days in bed in my flat, but was visited by a couple of the nurses from the hospital who persuaded me to return to the ward. My diary shows an appointment with the consultant, presumably as an out-patient as late as mid-April. There was talk of returning to work, joining a new intake who had started in September, it would mean doing just one essay to catch up. Then one day I was looking at the reading, it was all about ‘nursing models’, and what should have been a simple task for a graduate to take apart and critically analyse - just seemed totally nonsensical. What I was reading just didn’t register, I had no concentration, it was utterly baffling. It was then that I threw in the towel. (I’ve not worked since). I would resign, leave the flat, stay with my parents on the coast. I was almost thirty-two, had been trying my best since I was eighteen, and had lost…
　
(That was the third period in my life when I’d been in and out of madness, and there have been many more since, some more extreme, others less so - yet you learn nonetheless, up to the point where now it seems I can live in parallel realities, switching between them at will!)

The above events took place at Christmas 1990 at All Saints Hospital in Birmingham, a Victorian asylum next to Winston Green Prison. Neither exist anymore of course, the Home Office acquired the hospital site, and the other Victorian asylum was renamed The Birmingham Prison.

2015

Lee, L (1985) Selected Poems Penguin: London

The Recovery Movement (part 1)

The current fashion for the Recovery approach in mental health, means it is inevitable that it will feature in many of these blogs. I am, in part, a product of it myself, having been a client of one of the services which uses it, however I am also one of its critics. I don’t believe that the turnaround in my own mental health over the last four years or so can be attributed to the ideas and practices that Recovery-focused practitioners use.

Most people approach Recovery from an individual perspective - a worthwhile personal experience leads them to recommend it to others. I, on the other hand, have always seen it as a social movement within the world of mental health (hence the capital R).

The easiest way to introduce the subject is to signpost to short documents from individuals and organisations using the approach from here in Devon and the rest of the UK - I’ll leave the large number of connections to it in the US, NZ and Australia until part two (A brief history of Recovery).

In essence the Recovery movement has sort to change the way mental health services are organised and delivered in order to be more responsive to the stated needs of clients and their supporters. A set of ethical, moral and political values has emerged which are intended to inform the personal conduct of workers in their interactions with clients. To date, the movement has not generated any new theory of human behaviour or understanding of mental distress, nor has it advocated specific therapeutic interventions, and as such has not challenged the legitimacy of any of the occupational groups within the world of mental health.

A good starting point is the list of Recovery - concepts and applications devised by a group of commissioners, providers, service users and carers from Devon in 2008 and collated by Laurie Davidson http://www.scmh.org.uk/pdfs/recovery_concepts.pdf (There were originally eleven, not ten items - but that will be the subject of a future post!) The concepts were then used to inform the writing of Making Recovery A Reality published by the Sainsbury Centre For Mental Health http://www.scmh.org.uk/pdfs/Making_recovery_a_reality_policy_paper.pdf They were also reworked into a simpler form for the pamphlet Putting Recovery at the heart of all we do issued to all employees of Devon Partner NHS Trust http://www.devonpartnership.nhs.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/publications/info/Putting_Recovery_at_the_heart_of_all_we_do.pdf In 2009 the SCMH issued Position Paper - Implementing Recovery: A new framework for organisational change http://www.scmh.org.uk/pdfs/implementing_recovery_paper.pdf laying out specific proposals from which standards and outcomes could be set. Finally, the Recovery movement, client-centred as it is, offers the user‘s own ‘story’ as the principal form of evidence for Recovery. A recent example Beyond the Storms: Reflections on Personal Recovery in Devon http://www.devonpartnership.nhs.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/publications/Beyond_the_Storms.pdf edited by Laurie Davidson and Linden Lynn.

Peer Support - day to day, moment to moment

Being on a ward for twenty-four hours a day, means the influence of clients on each other is much greater than that of staff. You learn to communicate very rapidly because you have no choice. What remains incomprehensible speech and bizarre behaviour to staff, becomes more and more understandable amongst peers. What looks like nonsensical behaviour to the outsider who spends most of their time away from the ward makes sense to those within it. Equally amongst new workers, what might be called a ‘myth of inarticulacy’ grows up. There is no sense to the client’s world, when viewed by those who are confident that they are ‘normal’ and living in the ‘real world’, therefore the obligation remains with the client to fit-in by making themselves understandable - staff come to have a an ethnocentric outlook. And the only way out for the client is to start performing for the staff; you learn what it takes to get what you want, and do your best to manipulate the situation you find yourself in.

If you start from the position of never knowing outcomes, and of most encounters happening by chance, then the focus of informal peer support can be positively framed in terms of; what can I do today that might make a difference? The chance element gives flexibility, freedom and autonomy, but does not imply a lack of commitment or responsibility. Most obviously, you don’t have to be nice to whoever walks through the door! Greater honesty and less role-playing are possible, but equally you can be more emotionally and intellectually honest with yourself. You can observe real client confidentiality; not record or pass on information to other staff or mental health services. There can be a free exchange of information; you can give advice when you feel it is appropriate (especially about the competency of mental health staff and the value of different medications). You can walk away at a time you deem appropriate, whether it be after five minutes, five hours, five days or never! You can express feelings of emotional attachment towards other clients and use touch if it feels appropriate.

Many client’s ‘fear of madness’ is less than that of staff; you can discuss topics staff are often uncomfortable with, particularly self-harm, certain psychotic behaviours and suicide. You don’t have to stop anyone doing anything, or start anything you don’t want to. You can ‘work’ anywhere, anytime. You can use any ‘therapeutic’ techniques learnt over the years, in therapy or as a patient on hospital wards, to bring some temporary relief to others in extreme mental distress. And there is a greater ‘spirit’ of equality; you retain credibility with other service users, no one is paying you to be there; time and expertise are freely given, and in times of your own distress gratefully received. But in part the effectiveness of informal peer support is dependent on a willingness to stay within the ‘world view’ of your fellows and therefore sometimes look ‘mad’ to others. So the consequences of being responsible and loyal, can lead to longer periods of confinement and disapproval or censure from mental health professionals.

Peers are often harder on each other than workers are towards their clients. Sharing common experience often means less opportunity to delude oneself. Divergence in experience means that although the process of informal peer support may seem very similar to common forms of counselling when the subject is mild anxiety or depression, methods increasingly differ when it comes to communicating about psychosis, self-harm or suicide. This becomes apparent when attempts are made to formalise peer support. The devising of rules of good practice, the regularising of contact between people who would otherwise not choose to meet, and the assumption that anyone can learn the ‘appropriate’ skills, leads to systems that look very like the kind of therapy they were intended to replace.

For the service user there is only one thing worse than the sinking feeling you get when you realise that others are saying they hear what you say, but are looking upon you as ‘mad’; and that’s the moment when you express suicidal thoughts and the worker stops listening, at the same time as insisting on not leaving your side - until you stop sharing those thoughts!

For all mental health workers and the vast majority of the public there can only be one ‘model’ in response to expressed suicidal thoughts and that is ‘prevention’. And yet eventually everyone must be left alone. If your model is prevention then over a long career you must inevitably accrue a series of failures. But within that approach workers share ‘responsibilities’ and seek to support each other, whilst ideally enlisting other workers to support the carers of a client.

Although negative ‘outcomes’ are sometimes known - all outcomes remain unknowable beyond today! More often information on how clients are doing is simply lacking. And in terms of personal outcomes, a ‘helper’ never knows the actual contribution they have made to a client’s decision to act, whether it be in a way they regard as positive or negative. For a peer (someone who has shared similar experiences to the client) to seek to ‘prevent’ a suicide usually seems nonsensical; not only is it obviously impossible, but you know from past experience that at times it is something you have positively desired. Besides, what preoccupies your peer, is what might be called the issue of ‘is life worth living?’ What my experience of trying to be supportive has taught me; is that you end up trying to help someone come to a decision for themselves, free of the pressures they feel from the other people in their lives. You know a decision to live or die must be made by and for oneself - only then can it be powerful enough to carry you, either out of despair, or over the fear of death and the pain of dying. For the worst outcome is another ‘botched’ attempt, whereupon the cycle of despair simply beings again.

You walk away, preferable leaving them alone, when you judge yourself to have had the optimum impact on their freedom to choose. Clients confide in their peers for a reason, often for the confidentiality and understanding you can give because you are not staff. Much peer support is ‘unseen’ because the client chooses a time and place away from staff, relatives and carers. Clients do ‘intend’ to kill themselves, it is the most real solution there is to intolerable psychological pain. They fail because of incompetence. They then learn from experience, as do those who seek to prevent them. But it requires effort and organisation, energy and clear headedness.

That 'alternative' CV (updated 2020)

One of the things which provoked me to 'out' myself some years ago as a long-term user of mental health services was the advice I received from an employment adviser to 'hide' my lack of employment and periods of sickness from my CV. Not only did she suggest omissions, but a little creative use of dates.

(photos by Nick Hewling)

Now I know lots of people do massage the facts of their careers, but the idea of hiding an important part of myself incensed me. So in a mood of indignation I produced a CV which charted my 'career' as a mental patient. Once it was completed it had a surprise pay-off - it helped me make sense of my life, to myself.

Here's the main body of the current version, it begins conventionally enough;

1970-75 Vincent Thompson High School, Exeter: CSE grade 1’s in English,
Maths, Geography, Art, Design Studies; ‘O’ level English Language grade C.

1975-77 Exeter College, Exeter: ‘A’ level grade C in Photography, ‘O’ level
Geology grade C.

1978-80 Devon Area Health Authority, Exeter: Clerical Officer; banking and
management accounting, salaries and wages.

1980-82 Exeter College, Exeter: ‘A’ level Communication Studies grade C,
Business Studies grade D; BEC National Certificate in Business Studies, with
Distinction.
1982 (six months unemployed)

1983 Chateau Brandeau, Castillon, France: viticulture and animal husbandry.
1983-86 University of Bath: B.Sc (Hons) First Class in Sociology with Industrial
Relations.

1986-87 University of Bath: postgraduate research into Small Businesses.
1987 (first admission to a psychiatric hospital, nine months unemployed)

1988 Stourbridge College of Technology: introduction to teaching in Further
Education.
1988-89 Solihull College of Technology: part-time Lecturer; ‘A’ level Sociology, GCSE Business Studies.
1989 (nine months unemployed)
1989-90 Birmingham MIND: Volunteer; day-centre for long term mentally ill.
1990-91 North Birmingham Health Authority: Student Mental Nurse.
1991 (second and third admissions to psychiatric hospital)

1991-94 (unemployed)
1994 (fourth and fifth admissions to psychiatric hospital; diagnosed with Manic
Depression [Bipolar Affective Disorder])
1995 - 2011 (living on Income Support and disability benefits)
2005 (sixth admission to psychiatric hospital)

2006 - undertaking STR (support, time and recovery) Worker training (Devon Partnership NHS Trust/Community Care Trust)
2007 MDF: The Bi-polar Organisation; recovery, self management and life skills
course.

2007 - co-author of Making A Change (booklet on Involvement for NHS South
West PPI Learning and Development Project).
2007-10 University of Plymouth: M.Sc programme in Mental Health.

2007-10 member of Contract and Performance Review committee of Community Care Trust.
2008 - involved in the development of Broadhempston Community Woodland as a social enterprise.
2008-9 - member of Torbay, South and West Devon, Recovery and Independent Living Functional Implementation Group for Devon Partnership NHS Trust.
2008-9 - member of the Mental Health Network of the NIACE/LSC Partnership Programme

2011 (seventh admission to a psychiatric hospital)
2011- (no longer in receipt of state benefits, living off savings following death of older relatives)
2012 (eighth admission to a psychiatric hospital)
2014 (ninth admission to a psychiatric hospital)
2016 (tenth admission to a psychiatric hospital)

Current activity;

Mental health peer support and people watcher.

Ongoing writing in addition to blogs;

I Know, Because I Was There; an essay comparing my recall of hospitalisation during a ‘psychotic episode’, with my health records obtained under the Data Protection Act.

Challenging Expertise - my misadventures in mental health education; which charts my experience of being a service user in education, undertaking training in mental health work, and on how academia (at all levels) trains its workforce and researches its subject.

Ways Of Being With - rethinking expertise in mental health; an extended essay using the concept of tacit knowledge to rethink skill and expertise in mental health practice.

The Sound Of Water – towards an ecotherapy. This piece is a critical exploration of the idea that there can be an ecopsychology and by extension, ecotherapy. It will include an application of the principles of Ways Of Being With.

The Story We Tell Ourselves

For a long time I disliked the writing of other users of mental health services. Now I’ve concluded I just didn’t have the tools with which to begin an understanding. They seemed to write solely in order to make sense of their lives for themselves, more evidence of a preoccupation with ‘self’. As an avid reader however, of fiction, biography, reportage; and as a critical viewer of film and television - I knew that writing for oneself, was quite different from writing for others. You have to be aware of, and build a bridge towards an audience.

And of course the meaning of any communication is what the ‘receiver’ perceives it to be!

We all share that inability to explain ourselves to others, to make coherent those experiences that derailed our lives, that were brought to a head in the first encounter with the hospital consultant and their accomplices, describing the intimate details of our lives to a group of strangers. To begin with, there is no beginning. Although what follows is of course fact, we all turn our past experiences into a narrative. In retrospect and with hindsight, we take the ‘here and how’ as our ending, selecting those elements of the past which can be logically fitted together to explain the present. Equally, each act of remembering involves to some extent a reinterpretation of what actually happened - a game of Chinese Whispers played out with our own internal dialogue. We tell ourselves, ‘I know, because I was there‘! When in fact it is our selective memory which provides those ‘facts‘.

photo by Nick Hewling

As soon as I began trying to find a ‘way of telling’, knowing what I wrote could only be a reconstruction, I realised that what was most important was the ‘message’, the ideas and concepts that come from your story - and you can’t do that if you are anonymous! Workers suggest anonymity for your own protection, part of client confidentiality. But, ‘I believe’ has no impact if we don’t know who is saying it - and there is no right to reply if you don’t know who you are replying to. At worse, user writing gets used as a free ‘endorsement’ by service providers. And the reader should also always ask, what is the writer’s relationship with the people and places he writes about?

In the current culture of the Recovery approach, workers encourage or assume that ones experience should be framed in terms of an imagined pathway or journey. A progression to a brighter future, rich in positive meanings and full of hope. Alas this can only encourage the shoehorning of past experience to fit an idea of happiness, which is always tomorrow. I’m only interested in today, and I’ll make my meanings from the only real motivation there is - my attachment or attraction to others in the here and now. Which means I get ‘out and about’ with someone I like today, and not plan tomorrows. Others inspire.

So there is no reason in theory why there shouldn’t be a collective portrait of mental wellness. So often the story we tell ourselves is one of an obsession with self. It may be as simple as whether you notice the differences rather than the similarities between people! So much care is organised around ‘individual needs‘, when the answers are communal and collective, about sharing and intimacy. Staff talk of individual ‘pathways‘, I’d rather they lay an actual pathway from the hospital entrance to where the pavement ends on the edge of our town! And how about renovating the bus shelter at the hospital entrance, but without removing the decades of graffiti, which in itself is a kind of collective testimony.

How much of your life seems to have turned upon chance events, or things you did without being aware of having made any choices at all? The idea of our lives leading to somewhere, even without the help of partial recall, is aided by our commonsense notions that we have an essential character, identity or personality which becomes more fixed over time. This is the greatest danger of storytelling about oneself - that it actually narrows possible futures! It is actually good if others challenge rather than validate the story we tell ourselves. Being flexible enough to live with uncertainty is mental health.

The first time I was the recipient of another client’s work was during my second admission in 1990. A client who had been ‘on the roundabout’ for some years in various hospitals, showed me a poem he had written. Unexpectedly I liked it. It described his addiction to various street drugs, and the inevitable consequence of further admissions - it seemed to show great insight. When I handed it back to him he told me to keep it, though he had no copy. What struck me most was the way it looked (it still does). Written with a real ink pen (rare even then), the required rhythm was ‘spelt-out’ by words written in capitals and others underlined. He explained that it had no meaning for him in itself, it was the creating of it that gave a release from unwanted thoughts and feelings, and in giving it away he hoped others might share that.

A while ago I did the MDF self-management course, on the first day the facilitators asked us to consider 'reframing'; and as an example, describe ourselves and our lives without the 'language of illness'. I thought the idea ridiculous! But back at home I concluded I'd better come-up with something, in case I was challenged later. So in about forty minutes I scribbled down a dozen lines; fed it into the computer, tidied it up, printed it off, slipped it into the file and forgot about it. It was a contrived piece of work, an exercise - and it certainly wasn't how I felt about myself at the time.
　
Nick - reframed!
When I left school they said
You must have a job, a career
It gives meaning and purpose to your life.
I just wanted to go Walkabout
To wander aimlessly, in the hope
Of meeting interesting people
And learning something new every day.
So I am forever a student
Of the strange ways of individuals and groups
Of people in offices, shops, factories
Classrooms, lecture halls, hospital wards
Day centres, consulting rooms, therapy centres
On trains, in cars, buses, boats and airplanes.
I seek movement and change
To be always in the moment
Letting go the past, and the future
Travelling, but never hoping to arrive
Allowing the brain and body to take me where it pleases.
It’s an intellectual adventure
Finding-out, how human life evolves
But never for a moment believing
That the ‘I’ or ‘me’ of a so-called ‘Self ’
Is fixed forever
Just an evolving story I tell myself
About a person on a journey.
　
Strangely it was greeted with enthusiasm by those running the group, they asked if they could include it in a newsletter! Sometime later I showed it to someone from another mental health organisation; they called it a poem and asked to put it in their newsletter. Later still it appeared in a third. Much has changed in the eighteen months since. At present I have no symptoms of Bipolar, so objectively I cannot use that 'frame of reference'. And in reality I have become a student again, reading for a Masters degree. I still write similar things, but now the focus is - what is of practical use to others?
　
Catch Tomorrow Now

Can you stop?
Let go of thoughts and feelings
Of the past and future
And just be in the present moment.
Now is all there is.
Re-attach your emotions to your senses
In the real physical world of the present.
Notice what cues your thoughts now
Acknowledge them and let them go
Good or bad.
Allow yourself to feel the bad when it happens
Then it passes quickly.
Allow yourself to be ‘surprised by joy’
And let go those feelings too.
Knowing they will return unbidden.
Think of yourself as having no fixed self.
Able to construct a self anew every day
Attentive to others, unconcern for an ‘I’ or a ‘me’.
Aware of the others who make you what you are.
You learn most by imitation.
You only remain fixed
When you remake yourself today
As you were yesterday.
You imagine the past must persist into the future
But only because you reproduce it afresh everyday.
Don’t look forward or back, but around.
Seek to be more relaxed and aware.
Absorb what’s around you
And catch tomorrow now!
　
When we write for ourselves, in joy or misery, our stories are about ‘coming to terms with’. But when we write for others they are realer - for an actual pathway is only created after many walkers have taken the same trail. Finally,
　
Writing to recover…

To explain to oneself
To make sense to oneself
For oneself.
Then,
What can I share
Can others understand
Can I make them listen
Even think differently
Will my meanings be their meanings
Does it matter
Do I want to help others
Is there an audience…?
Can we transform each other
Can there be a communal portrait
And in a world of madness,
Can anyone call another ‘companero'…?

(written 2008)