Sorrel Richards lives in England. She is currently a stay at home mother of two, and she writes articles about mental health. She has an MA in Sociology, and she used to be a social worker. In 1995 she had an acute psychotic breakdown which resulted in hospitalization. Although she is now fully recovered, she is still disturbed by the experience and the knowledge that so little has changed in the treatment of mental illness. The following is my account of what happened.

 "We must stand up for ourselves. Our voices you must hear.

We can no longer hide under a cloak of silence and of fear.

We have many words, and should be allowed to speak.

Not down trodden, undermined and made to feel meek."

(Angie Dean, Inside Outside)

Many people are familiar with the idea of inner space, a private core of ourselves where the thoughts and feelings that belong only to us reside, safe from the scrutiny of others. It is difficult for most of us to imagine how it feels to have this space examined and deemed unacceptable, irrational, and insane. From that moment, after those in the know have made their damning diagnosis, everybody is able to dismiss anything that happens to emerge from this space as not worth considering. Your experience is no longer regarded as valid. Your voice is effectively silenced. In 1995 I suffered a breakdown of my own, but I believed I was experiencing something that could be described as spiritual. I was seeing the world in a transformed way that was amazing and exciting. I was discovering a point to everything. It was like looking at things with the eyes of a child again. Life seemed exciting, wonderful and positive. I felt I understood the importance of maintaining a child-like (as opposed to childish) view of the world in adult life. I saw profound connections between events, and experienced strange coincidences. However, these revelations came at a time when I was also suffering from a profound lack of sleep due to the demands of a stressful course in social work and a one year old child. To those around me I had gone completely mad.

After my so-called recovery and transformation back into an acceptable member of society rather than a rambling lunatic, achieved with a winning combination of drugs and yet more drugs, the strange ideas that I had in my disturbed state stayed with me refusing to be dismissed. I still feel today that children hold a lot of answers about what is and isn’t important in life, that they have a way of looking at things which embraces beauty and change that many could benefit from rediscovering. I still feel that my illness started me on a journey of discovery that has certainly not been a negative experience. My treatment in the psychiatric system turned this journey into a nightmare.

Admitted for rest, I found myself in a confusing noisy psychiatric unit full of strangers, most of whom ignored me, with no real idea of where I was or why I was there. The worst thing was not knowing where my one year old daughter was. No one asked me how I was actually feeling. I was given drugs to make me sleep and then shown to a dingy side ward where I was told to relax and get some rest. What happened was that I got more and more frightened and agitated until I tried to get away and found myself being restrained (sat on actually) by six nurses and injected with large amounts of tranquilizers. When I eventually came to, I discovered a piece of paper by my bed telling me I had been sectioned for 28 days. My futile attempt at escape was interpreted as trying to end it all by jumping out of the window. It would have been an unsuccessful suicide especially as the ward was on the ground floor). I was considered to be a risk to myself and was placed on 24 hour observation. By that time, I was so full of drugs I couldn’t even walk to the window, let alone jump out of it, despite the fact that death now seemed like a good alternative.

For the next four weeks, I was spoken to as if I were a complete idiot and I tried to cope with the horrendous side effects of the various drugs they tried. They freely admitted they had no real idea what was wrong and the diagnosis varied from anorexia to post-natal depression. They eventually settled on schizophrenia. I appealed against the section for something to do. They refused to release me, saying that they hadn’t worked out an effective drug regime. I did have some art therapy which consisted of coloring in butterflies, apparently a well known cure for psychosis! I did consider trying to escape again, but the window didn’t open far enough for me to get through, and it kept snowing. Also there were an alarming number of security cameras around, and large male nurses. If you weren’t paranoid when admitted, you certainly were by the time you left. I was surrounded by phones and televisions and confusing tanoys by disturbed people and intimidating nurses. There was no privacy and no quiet space. I was in a worse situation than many of the clients I myself had worked with, ironically as a social worker.

I lost count of the number of times people said they weren’t surprised by what had happened (new baby, stressful course in social work, unhappy marriage etc.) but I can’t ever remember being asked about what I was actually feeling and thinking. There was no longer anything remotely spiritual about the experience. It was nightmarish and frightening as it is for so many trapped in an unsympathetic and incompetent system. All I wanted was a quiet and peaceful place to sleep away from confusing noise, television and telephones, things I found impossible to deal with and safe in the knowledge that my daughter was being well looked after. Instead, I was trapped in an alien place full of strangers and chaos, being pumped full of drugs that confused me even more.

When I was eventually released, there was no care in the community despite the fact that I was caring for a very young child and badly needed support. My follow-up treatment consisted of monthly visits to my psychiatrist involving unhelpful discussions about the drugs I was still on, and an unsuccessful session with an alternative therapist who decided that reflexology was the best course of action. Unfortunately, her office was in the grounds of the hospital, two bus rides away from my home, and I couldn’t face the journey on my own. The hospital social worker (who was so obviously nonplussed by me she was worse than useless) was supposed to visit me at home, but she never showed up.

Nearly four years later, I look back at the experience with a mixture of anger and amazement that I survived relatively unscathed. What really frightens me is the fact that so little has changed in the treatment of mental illness. It is still a greatly feared and little understood condition. There is still the barely [can’t get rid of the break here! KPB][I could do this DN] concealed opinion that people who are apparently mentally ill just need to pull themselves together and stop behaving in an attention seeking and frankly, slightly unnecessary manner. Physical illnesses often have visible signs and therefore the people who suffer from them are more likely to be regarded as having legitimate reasons for needing understanding. Mental illness has no such obvious visible signs (unless you count tearing your hair out and banging your head against a brick wall!). I remember being horrified when I saw pictures of people being treated in lunatic asylums at the turn of the century when I was studying for my psychology degree, comforting myself with the thought that nobody would be that barbaric today in our society of knowledge and care. Nice sentiment.

I have no wish to generalize or imply that everybody’s experience of the mental health system is a wholly negative thing. I just really don’t know of many who can say otherwise. Neither do I know how many other people have experienced something that could be described in a spiritual way, but has been interpreted as insanity. Once labeled as such, the words are dismissed and the voice silenced. There are few places that are less conducive to calm discussion of what you are feeling than the average psychiatric unit, and few times that you are more confused and vulnerable than when you are an inmate. It is hard to remember your own name, or discuss anything in a way that might possibly make sense to anyone who takes the time to listen. It is virtually impossible to talk at all when you are pumped full of various drugs, let alone coherently describe your inner thoughts. For many, the whole experience is so frightening that they seldom remember much about the experience itself that led them to be admitted in the first place.

It could be argued that imbalances in the brain’s chemistry lead to such aberrations in our perceptions (as experienced by migraine sufferers or drug takers) that any ideas that one has in this state can only be dismissed as irrational and not worth further consideration. In the same way that it is difficult to just dismiss our dreams despite their obvious unreal nature, it is equally difficult to just forget any changes in belief that occur as a result of such an intense and mind altering experience as a breakdown. The dismissive approach hinges on the belief that there is only one kind of reality, a normal objective reality full of things we understand that don’t challenge the status quo and which don’t unsettle or alarm us. Most of us don’t want to be forced to confront parts of ourselves that we would rather remain well hidden and unquestioned. It might lead to the difficult situation of having to completely rethink our approach to life. This is a journey upon which most of us are not willing or ready to embark. It is also easier to dismiss the ramblings of the insane rather than admit that they may reveal some very important insights into the world and our relationship to it, and each other.