After the Asylum

                                      

 

                        AFTER THE ASYLUM  

     

                               

                                    Introduction 

 

 Living on the front line of psychiatry and drug abuse in the community I have witnessed the social problems that only a dual diagnoses psychiatric patient could see.  I am not trying to moralise or blame, only to report accurately to understand what has happened. Having said that there is nothing here that is not typical of the world of the care in the community patient so hopefully what I have written will raise awareness by dispelling ignorance and attendant prejudice.

While I was writing ‘The Road to the Asylum’ I had to put some financial concerns aside. I arranged to work under the permitted work rule; I could work as many hours that I was able but, while I remained on benefit I was only allowed to earn twenty pounds a week. This caused unexpected problems. Some people were apparently choked when they heard of this arrangement and thinking for some reason that I was ‘getting away with it’ set about being disruptive. There were whisper campaigns and rumours. I asked the social services and the police for advice and they told me that there was nothing they could do until there was an incident. I was advised to keep a record of the abusive comments I had to endure. I mapped the rumour and added it to my account of events that occurred since I left the psychiatric wards. There were other resentments. People still think that writing and art are easy options and not work. I was told by one of the MIND staff that I had wasted my life and thrown away my education. I had actually earned a free place at a local direct grant school by studying to do well in my 11 plus, staying in at lunch break for extra lessons and working hard in class. I was told my benefit was ’ought for nought’ by another one of the MIND staff when in fact my psychiatrist and social worker said that I should claim because, though entitled to compensation for the treatment I had received and the resultant minor brain damage, it was unlikely that the hospital would accept responsibility.      

                     

 

         

                                 In the Community  

 

 After I left Cane Hill hospital in 1981 I had to stay in probation hostels. I was not on probation but it was the only accommodation available. After a resident attacked me in the Bromley North hostel, I was moved to Penge. You had to be out of the hostels during the day, in Penge the hostel manager let residents stay in if they were helping with his video project. I kept away from that and sometimes had to walk about in the snow. I found a friend who was a junkie, she lived in Crystal Palace and I could spend the day there sometimes. Eventually I was awarded a council flat on the Ramsden estate in Orpington. I invited Barbara to live with me and after a while she fell pregnant. She was sure she could not have children for some reason, but our son was born in 1983 and we named him Charlie, after her father. Her father was a Vietnam veteran, a sergeant who had done three tours of Vietnam, and got a job as a postman after he left the army. He was very supportive, sending care parcels at Christmas and on Barbara’s birthday. He would send clothes for me as well. I started buying and selling second hand records, there was a record factory in nearby St Mary’s Cray and undistributed records and test pressings would turn up in the Save the Children shop in Orpington. This was not the same premises that was given a makeover by Mary Portas, Save the Children was at that time situated a few shops down the High Street and has since closed. Buying records from the other charity shops in Orpington, usually when visiting the High Street to do the weekly shop, I would bring them home and check them for wear and scratches on a record player. After reading the music press, usually the NME, to see which bands were fashionable, I would then select records to put into a carrier bag, sometimes two, and take them to the Tape and Record Exchange in Notting Hill, and sell them on. I had to confidently walk past the front desk to the stairs leading to the first floor collectors department. All this never brought me much money, just pin money that meant the bills were paid and that there was food on the table. Sometimes I attended the occupational therapy department, but this did not pay, though you were given a midday meal morning coffee and afternoon tea. They also paid your fares. This was partly for therapeutic reasons and partly because I was on anti-psychotic drugs and could earn a reduction in the dose if I went along with the care plan.

You can’t bring up a child in a tower block so we were moved to the Mountfield estate in St Mary Cray, near the permanent Gypsy, or Travellers caravan site that was the first in the country. In 1962 we were told all sorts of stories about the Gypsies in the playground, such as how a Gypsy could put a curse on you if you did not give them gold. But over the years there was integration and by the 1980’s it was difficult to tell the difference between the locals and the Gypsies, or Travellers, should you want to.

Barbara and I made friends, Barbara met Angie, a drug user whose friends were criminals. Angie worked for an escort agency. Barbara did not use drugs, or drink or smoke. My friend was Nat who was an ex-junkie but still used cannabis and amphetamine. I continued with my art work and writing but was slowed by the anti-psychotic drugs I was obliged to take. Nat was a keen guitarists and we must have spent over a thousand hours talking about and listening to music, usually cassettes which I sometimes brought back from London when I sold second hand records, and passing my guitar back and forth, playing to each other whatever we had learnt since his last visit. Nat liked Captain Beefheart, Pink Floyd, and Hawkwind, and not only had more aptitude for music than me, but also more confidence. He started to rehearse with some local musicians in a garage on the Utopia estate in Farnborough. The Utopia estate was not a council estate like Ramsden or Mountfield, it was a private estate. But Nat preferred to jam and improvise as a rhythm guitarist and did not fit into the more structured music the band started to rehearse when a Christian musician took them under his wing.

The band used cannabis and amphetamine but Christians sometimes work with drug users, though they don’t go on about it. With this fellows help they started to play songs and achieve pub rock standard, not easy to attain if you have ever seen a band play in a bar. Nat either refused to compromise or was asked to leave. They did not exclude him completely but Nat was relegated to operating a light show which consisted of coloured lights operated by some simple controls in a box. He was supposed to make the lights keep time with the music. The band were good enough to play in the nurse’s bar at what was then Farnborough hospital, now Queen Elizabeth hospital. But Nat’s pride was hurt and he walked out half way through the set. Nat still moved back and forth from the Utopia estate to the Mountfield estate, sometimes stopping on the way to visit a couple who sold drugs. Amphetamine brought out the worst in Nat. He spent his benefit money almost immediately buying cannabis amphetamine and tenants larger. For a couple of days he was the life and soul of the party then he expected everyone to feed and even clothe him. As he wore out his clothes as he wore out his welcome. For a while he had a council flat in a tower block but could not cope. He spent his rent money on drugs and did not pay the bills and was eventually evicted. He took to sleeping in the empty trains at Orpington station, when they still had door handles on the carriages. We moved away but he followed us, but when things went wrong he was nowhere to be seen.

Nat had been abandoned as a baby when he was two weeks old and had been taken into care. He was in a children’s home then fostered. His foster parents dumped him on the social services doorstep on his 16th birthday. Nat was half African and he once complained that both black and white people were racist toward him. With his afro hair people thought he looked like Jimi Hendrix. Nat thought he looked more like Bob Marley and the painting on the cover of Bob Marley’s Natty Dread LP, is where the resemblance shows. Nat was living with his girlfriend Jane when I first met him, and he was a father figure to her son by another relationship. He was good with children and I think he wanted them to have the childhood he was denied. Because I had spent time in psychiatric hospitals I felt we had something in common, we had both been in institutions.

Nat had also spent time in prison, for burglary, and had an ongoing grudge with another ex-junkie who lived on the Mountfield estate, Bill. Both accused the other of grassing, neither would back down. We drifted apart and I did not see him for years. Once I saw him sleeping on the stair well at the multi-story car park at Orpington war memorial. Then I saw him from a bus at the bus stop at Carlton Parade at the other end of Orpington High Street, opposite the library park gardens. He was staring me down, obviously annoyed at me for some reason. I last saw him in the High Street, he walked past me and smiled  weakly as if to say there was no bad feeling between us then one night I typed his name into the computer and it I saw the notice of his funeral in a church newsletter. His full name was Natcio Munnings and the funeral was in North London, where he went to stay sometimes. No-one else is called Natcio Munnings. He was another unsung South London guitar player who with his uncompromising hippie rock playing style and ideals may have found success if it were not for the changes Punk rock brought.

 

Barbara, my son Charlie and I moved into a house in South Darenth. We had sold the council property to the council for a pittance and went in with my parents who bought a small terraced house in South Darenth. They did not give us the house but instead we had a part share in a thirty year lease. My parents were worried fir myson and did not want him to bee brought up in the rough part of St Mary Cray. Soon they were bothering me and though I had made some connections in the art world they were asking me to work for them. I did work for them for a while doing some bookwork and taking money to the bank but packed it in after a few months. When you leave hospital you want the life you had before but it does not work like that. In any case I made the effort to stop taking tablets and whatever else I thought I was entitled to use. This happens to drug users who leave prison. They dream of their release because they can go back to using the drugs that they feel they have been deprived of. I could see this danger so I started attending Joyce Green psychiatric unit as an outpatient. The attitude towards patients seemed a bit different in North West Kent, to that in the borough of Bromley. Staff attitude reminded me more of Oakwood, and that is not a good thing. Patients were treated more like children. For it’s faults psychiatry in Bromley encouraged adult attitudes and responsibility. So I was soon marked out as a trouble maker. The head of the occupational therapy department took a dislike to me and would not let me work in the art room all the time, I must do woodwork as well. I said I could do wood burning, decorating wood with a soldering iron. 

After reading a bed time story to my then 5 year old son I resolved to stop taking the tablets son. I was on 5mg Valium three times a day and a sleeping tablet, Halcion. I told my psychiatrist, Dr Shan that I intended to do this. Dr Shan was skeptical, saying that I was never going to stop taking drugs, adding that I had an addictive personality. He then told me that I would have to be admitted as an in-patient. He drew up a withdrawal programme for the Valium  which was for ten days, instead of the recommended reduction of 2 - 2. 5 milligrams fortnightly recommended in the British National Formulary. So instead of a minimum of 12 weeks I was to withdraw from the drug in a week and a half. Dr Shan added I did not have to worry about the Halcion, though I now know that the sleeping pill was the equivalent. What neither of us knew was that Halcion would be the subject of questions in parliament and eventually be banned from sale in the UK. The reason for this was that the manufacturers failed to disclose the frequent and disabling adverse reactions these drugs caused, even in small prescribed doses. These reactions included bizarre behaviour and psychotic symptoms that I remember experiencing and influenced my decision to stop taking the drug.

Perhaps Dr Shan mistook the side effects of the Halcion for my own behaviour after all he had not known me for very long.  I had been taking Halcion for years. The minutes of evidence presented to the House of Commons acknowledge that patients have been misdiagnosed after being prescribed benzodiazapines the class of drugs to which Valium and Halcion belong.  The minutes of evidence also state that a report by the Royal College of Psychiatrist states that no single underlying trait or unique constellation of personality features can be identified as predisposing to drug abuse. In other words the concept of the addictive personality is a myth. Drugs are a disease of exposure and that is what happened to me when Dr Shan, after the ten day withdrawal programme, prescribed an anti-psychotic injection which I now know is contra indicated during the withdrawal of benzodiazapines.  Again the BNF states that that anti psychotics should be avoided as they aggravate withdrawal symptoms which according to the formulary may persist for a year or more. The effect of this was so distressing that I took an overdose of phenobarbitone and ended up on the heart ward. I was in a coma when they found me and could not pump me out so they gave me haemodialysis washing my blood out with saline. My family were told that I would either die, or survive as a vegetable or with brain damage. I was taken back to the ward and told that I would receive another injection so I walked out and walked home. Shortly after Barbara my partner at the time decided to visit her family in America saying that she would be gone for three months, so I was left on my own with no counseling or help from the social services. I had stopped taking drugs but when Barbara told me that she was not coming I fell into self-neglect. It was obvious that after we moved in, probably encouraged by Angie, that Barbara wanted the house to herself. Her attitude toward me changed and this did not help my withdrawal programme because she became unsupportive. Then after she left my family were also unsupportive. When talking to my father on the phone I heard my mother say, he’s not having that house. They kidnapped my pet dog one day and I came home to find the barrel of the lock on the front door changed. I had to break a window to get in but that meant the house went to rack and ruin, because local lads raided the house when I went to the shops as the back door had no secure lock as I had lost the key. Items like a row of books or a rack of clothes would disappear. I found one of them in the front room who talked his way out of the front door. The police called more than once not only concerned about my welfare but also on one occasion to see if ‘anyone was here who shouldn’t be’. Eventually I was taken to Stone House hospital where Dr Shan gave me anti- psychotic drugs. My parents knew nothing about the Halcion and its side effects, or of the withdrawal programme I was subjected to, so I took the blame for the subsequent events. When my common law wife left me taking my son for good my parents harassed me stealing my dog and changing the lock on the front door. I heard my mother say ‘He’s not having that house’ in the distance at the other end of the line when I was talking to my father on the telephone. Then, as I had to break into my own home, the house became vulnerable and local drug fiends started stealing from the house. Rows of books, cassettes clothes would go missing. I came back to find one of them in the front room. I spent the winter without electricity before I was sectioned. Then my father had me sign my share of the house over to him, while I was under the influence of anti-psychotic drugs.            

 

                         

 

                                    In the Community

 

 

 Stone House was not originally a psychiatric hospital it was a converted school. Patients were expected to attend the industrial therapy unit or the occupational therapy department. Wages were very low; the most you could earn in the industrial therapy was £14 a week, £5 a week in the occupational therapy. Most of the patients were good company, one cannot help that the mean spirited attitude in the community is a result of being spoilt. In fact for a while just before the hospital was closed patients were asked to work for nothing as there was no money for wages. The patients continued to work for nothing, can you imagine that happening in the outside world. With the closure of the hospital both the industrial and occupational therapy services have closed down. Patients enjoyed socialising whist doing therapeutic work. Now they exist in isolation in the community, often abused and exploited.

In Stone House hospital patients were usually given anti-psychotic psychiatric medication which had unpleasant side effects and often led to illness in later life. But patients endured their illness usually without complaint. It is a shame when patients are expected to take medication unnecessarily. The asylums that were run by the Tukes, Quaker reformers in the 19^th century, who with their ‘moral treatment’ model adopted a more compassionate approach to mental illness, had no need for enforced or coerced sedation. I believe it is a myth that patients become violent when not on medication, in fact it is possible that medication and its side effects causes not only resentment but makes patients more vulnerable to the street drinkers and drug users in the community as it affects their judgement.

Some patients are aggressive but most are not. Despite the grim circumstances, the medication, the overcrowding and the poverty most patients were good natured. Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism described the mentally ill as naive and honest. Enduring prejudice against the mentally ill will continue to buy misery all round. I can recall a few of the patients, though all deserve to be more remembered that they are, and I hope this will give the reader a more informed view than the usual media stereotype. 

When I arrived on Vintry, the admission ward, I was given a bed in a small side ward. All sorts of patients passed through Vintry ward, alcoholics the suicidal depressed, those experiencing manic and psychotic episodes were all monitored by nursing staff their reports read by the psychiatrist who would decide which course of treatment was appropriate. I was very distressed, and was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs, which I spat, learning to hide them in my mouth until I left the ward. But I got caught, I was challenged, and put on injections. I was transferred to the main dormitory. Three of the twenty beds were taken by patients who had jumped off the Brent bridge, which spanned a motorway a few hundred yards from the hospital, and survived. There was a gypsy fellow on the ward who was quite friendly unless you happened to leave the dormitory door open whereupon he would punch you. There was a one eyed fellow called Bill. He sat on his bed most of the time and often bought half a bottle of whiskey. I had borrowed a couple of pounds off him and offered to pay him back when we met in the corridor. 'You don‘t owe me anything‘, he said. Shortly after I passed his bed and heard him say ’When you come to the end of a lollipop’, to no-one in particular. That was the last thing I heard him say the next thing I heard was that he had taken an overdose and died.

 

Patients too ill to attend or not yet referred to occupational therapy sat in the day room watching television. In the evening some patients and visitors would socialize in a gloomy smoky foyer by the north entrance to the hospital next to the ward. Gay Watts sat in the day room most of the time, by a shapeless patchwork blanket that she had been knitting. But she didn’t knit anymore because she suffered from Huntingdon’s Chorea which is a physical illness with psychiatric problems. Gay, not yet thirty was so ill that she could not talk, and was not going to get better. In the community she would have been ridiculed and bullied but in the days of the old asylums she could at least be spared that distress. The staff thought the world of her but did not spoil her, and some of patients looked after her during the day as the nurses were always overworked. Everyone looked out for her and no-one complained when she repeated the same phrase over and over again in a heart-rending plaintive voice. ‘My mum’s coming to visit me’ ‘tea with sugar’ and ‘I told you'. Sadly she could only repeat a few phrases as her mind was going along with her health. The other patients would fetch her knitting, or her bean bag, in the hope of quietening her. Once she was walking, with difficulty, holding her skirt which was slipping, to the foyer where patients socialised in the evening with visitors, often ex patients who wanted company. Colin Sams was a visitor in those days. Gay stopped and announced, ’I’ve got Huntingdons. Maureen Rose, a spirited patient who would answer anyone back, said ’Yes, Gay you’ve got Huntingdon's’. One of the Brent bridge survivors, Arthur Watkins, used to run errand for patients who wanted food from the local Chinese takeaway, situated just the other side of the Brent bridge. He was paid a pound for every order. Such was the camaraderie on the ward that anyone who tried to poach his customers was discouraged. 

For a while I was given the job of feeding Gay at dinner time, until a nurse would take over distract Gay and mix her tablets in with her food, which they are allowed to do when patients are non-compos mentis. I would wait around and clear the table for Gay, the she would calmly up turn a few tables and chairs. I turned them the right way round, worried that the staff would give her more sedatives if they found out.

Phyllis Rose usually sat around a corner in the foyer. Phyllis was in her late fifties and smoked heavily. She was prescribed Valium. She had studied comparative religion at university and worked as a secretary at one of the famous film studios, and had met the stars of the screen but did not go on about it. She had fallen on hard times and ill health and was a respectable woman who was humiliated by her destitution. I once asked her what she thought of Satanists and out of nowhere and out of character replied that she did not know of a Satanist who wasn't a heroin addict. She liked Arthur and called him her Parisian friend. Arthur was almost mute, offering the odd oh and alright when taking orders from the take away as a reply. Phyllis was concerned that they sent him to the shop because he walked with a limp after jumping off the bridge, but another patient reassured her saying that he was paid well and was the richest patient on Dowgate ward. ‘As long as he gets paid I suppose it’s alright’ said Phyllis. Though life for her was a source of regret I never heard her complain. I asked Arthur about art therapy in the hospital and he said he had attended in the sixties to get out of going to industrial therapy but could not draw.

 

I was referred to a long stay ward, Dowgate. Unlike the admission ward, Dowgate was an all-male ward, mainly middle aged and elderly patients. Some of the patients were committed years ago for petty crimes and indiscretions that would mean little today but at the time were seen to be indicative of mental illness. One fellow. Victor, had been a Desert Rat during the war fighting Rommel in North Africa. When he arrived back in Britain he got into a fight with a policeman and was duly summoned to court. He was found not guilty but the police had him committed under the lunacy act, and he had remained at Stone House for nearly fifty years. There were similar cases over the years these patients became used to life in the hospital and could not survive without it.  But there were also patients that needed care from the start. Many of these were patients on Charterhouse ward. In other purpose built psychiatric hospitals these patients would have been kept on the back wards behind locked doors mainly to stop them wandering off but also to stop morbid sightseers. But Charterhouse was walk through and any visitor could witness the appalling physical and mental state of some of these patients. Some were in a semi vegetative state, moved from their beds in the morning to the day room then back to the dormitory at night.

Chelsea ward was locked to stop its geriatric patients wandering but there were no locked wards for aggressive patients, these were transferred to Bexley hospital where they did have locked wards. But mainly it is a myth that psychiatric patients are violent. By and large it was safer on the long stay wards than in the community.

 

  

 

On Dowgate ward patients were at least ambulant and though some were almost mute most attended therapy during the day leaving a few who could not work on the ward. One patient Frank, who did not attend therapy, made it his job to keep the kitchen tidy. The kitchen was kept locked during the day except at tea break and coffee break when it was open for half an hour and at lunch break for an hour when patients could make their own tea and coffee. We would have to buy tea from the hospital shop as the ward tea was made with industrial size tea bags. Sugar was put in the tea pot along with milk and poured straight into the cup. There was a rota for the patients to take turns for kitchen duty, making and pouring tea and washing up the cups and dinner crockery and cutlery as dinner was served on the ward. In the evening nurses left the kitchen open for a couple of hours after evening milky drinks. After the kitchen was locked patients had to make tea from the warm water in the washroom. As the water was not boiling to prevent patients scalding themselves this was not a very satisfactory brew.

Though most of the patients on Dowgate were quiet and friendly, one patient, Ray became agitated at evening meal time, he was a big fellow and the food sent up from the kitchens was never enough for him. He would march down to kitchen and demand another dinner, banging on the kitchen door until one of the kitchen staff presented him with a second meal which he would bring back to the ward. Ray, allegedly on a twenty year section for setting fire to a psychiatrists barn was said to have spent time in Rampton. He told me that he was not even supposed to leave the ward, such were the conditions of his section, but this did not stop him occasionally absconding and signing on homeless at the Elephant and Castle. During the day the nurses would have to inform the police of Ray’s disappearance. The police would then visit the ward. Ray would return of his own accord in the evening making no secret of the money he had obtained from the social security. The staff were always indignant and would demand he give the money back as it was obtained under false pretences but Ray would steadfastly refuse treating himself to tobacco and other luxuries from the hospital shop. On one occasion the nurses conspired to win the money back from Ray in a game of cards. Ray was usually sedated on his return and the staff thought that they had the advantage and could easily win the money back, but like the fellow who can hold a tune however drunk he gets Ray was an exceptional card player, and won money off the nurses.    

Most of the patients on Dowgate were abandoned by their families and to save patients feeling left out the nurses would collect money of the patients and buy them a present with their own money, handing out the presents on Christmas morning. On the patients birthday the nurse would ask the kitchen to send up a cake which would arrive with the evening meal.   

Sometimes a couple female patients from Walbrook ward would visit Dowgate, looking for company. Walbrook was the female long stay ward. Patients on these wards were usually there for life. This changed when it was announced that the hospital was to close. Like Dowgate any patient squabbles were usually about cigarettes. Two of the patients on Walbrook were blind, but quite talkative. Like Dowgate most of the patients attended industrial or occupational therapy and sometimes there was talk of who was working and who wasn’t. The wards were usually fairly quiet patients would watch television when not at therapy. I doubt if the so-called sane members of society would be so well behaved under the same circumstances their behaviour would probably soon degenerate.

There was a tradition of nurses emigrating from Ireland to work at Stone House. I remember one day a few of the female nurses singing Irish songs in the hall, they had beautiful voices. Not all nurses were from Ireland, some were from India, China, Malaysia and Mauritius. Some of course were English. The staff were multi-racial and none the worse for it. In the hospital there was little of the bigotry and blame culture that exists in the community. Patients and staff were too busy to indulge in petty prejudice; racism and homophobia were almost unheard of.

When the hospital closed wards were merged as patients were found homes in the community. In the old hospitals the days were long, patients were woken at seven in the morning, and though the patients slept in crowded dormitories, had little money, and had to take medication that often did them no good they had a roof over their head and three square meals a day. Patients since the closures are more likely to end up sleeping in a doorway on the street, where they will probably fall in with beer drinkers and drug users and the same is true for those who manage to find a place in a hostel, a bed-sit or accommodation in social housing. In either case they may be obliged to take medication which only undermines their resolve. Without the old hospitals patients can seldom recover from manic or psychotic episodes on the ward and they seriously mentally ill that need long term nursing are more likely to be subject to neglect. It is to society’s shame that better provision has not been made for the mentally ill who later in life will usually  also suffer from physical illness. While society prefers pay football and celebrity culture, financiers and the captains of industry astronomical wages to name but a few of its unnecessary expenses, the mentally ill will suffer causing resentment and distress throughout society .

I left the hospital when Alice Rees offered me a room in her house, she let rooms to patients taking twenty pounds a week out of our benefit money. It seemed and was a good deal seeing that in hospital I was in a poverty trap as my benefit had been reduced to a few pounds pocket money.

 

I once saw Dr Stoat pay a visit to the Dartford Clubhouse toward the end of the 1990’s. The Dartford Clubhouse is a day centre based on an American model of day care, and was started in 1992 as Stonehouse hospital was closing. The clubhouse staff, some ex Stonehouse staff showed favouritism right from the start. Chalky ‘Len’ White and Graham White (no relation) were in with the staff from the start.

There were already rumours about me at the clubhouse and after the Clubhouse moved to Twisleton Court Dartford, and the founder of the Dartford Clubhouse, Marcus Gramps moved on, Amy Tebbut took over and was vocally homophobic. Amy Tebbutt told me that that two gay patients had committed suicide at Stone house but that was nothing to what went on there. But I had been a patient at Stonehouse and had seen for myself.

 

 

 

 

 

Apart from the vast reduction of beds and staff for the psychiatric patient that occurred when the old asylums closed the wards themselves are increasingly used for treating the casualties of the drug epidemic. Psychiatrists who still cannot distinguish between natural and drug induced psychosis feel obliged to treat the psychotic who are socially disruptive. The prisons have no room for the minor drug offender and it is not unusual to find small-time dealers who have overindulged in their own wares on the wards of the local psychiatric unit. And what a nuisance these characters are with flaunting the luxury trappings bought with the profits from selling drugs. These types demand priority treatment, resort to threatening behaviour, harassing the other patients. They complain about the food and expect to be served first at the dinner table. They come and go as they please, conduct their sordid business from and in the hospital, even dealing on the ward. Often they consider themselves above any therapy that they are referred to. Thankfully these dealers find the hospital situation beneath them and as soon as they feel ’better’ they go back home to their drug-funded family and lifestyle. Psychiatric staff who can be notorious bullies to legitimate patients seldom stand up to the drug dealer on the ward who adopts a prison daddy stance. Besides having to cope the with the street drug induced problems, the use of the legitimate psychiatric drugs is bringing its own issues. Drugs administered on the ward, where the patient is fed three meals a day and has domestic staff employed to clear up and clean after them, are routinely given to the care in the community patient. A typical drug regime for a middle aged patient often means that a cocktail of drugs is prescribed. Obviously the patient does not wish to take an antipsychotic that seldom effectively combats psychotic symptoms and has disabling and disfiguring side effects, so they are injected with a long acting preparation of the drug, attending an outpatients department for this purpose. This may be supplemented with an antidepressant a side effects tablet and a sleeping tablet. Often the patient, hopelessly unemployable often as a result of such a medication regime, is left on their own to self-medicate or drink. In the days of the old hospitals the nurse would immediately recognise the patient who had been drinking, and confront the patient concerned. In the community it is different. The patient for instance who is awarded a council flat on medical grounds will find their problems just beginning. As soon as neighbours find out that the new resident has a history of mental illness they will be prejudice. Drug dealers and users looking for premises will try to befriend the patient, vulnerable not only because of their illness but also as a result of the medication. The patient is expected to cook clean and shop under the influence of drugs, legal or not often both. Almost inevitably they fall into self-neglect and are treated by the locals rather like a medieval dancing bear. Casualties of this scenario are prioritised by the mental health service often before the anorexic the recovering manic depressive, the depression case who quietly turn their suffering inward.

 The appalling side effects of these drugs has been mentioned in the House of Lords, by the Lord of Howe, and confirmed by Lord Bragg who is Patron of Mind,a mental health charity. Lord Bragg quotes a couple of psychiatric patients one of who claims that ‘I was given Haliperidol. It made my limbs stiff. It gave me anxiety. I was suicidal’, in response to The Lord of Howe who lists some of the side effects of psychiatric drugs. Lord Bragg quotes another anonymous statement,’I want the government to realise that Depixol and other antipsychotic drugs can cause apathy… it was as if my soul had died’. While it is commendable that these Lords are not only aware of these problems but prepared to speak out about them, why did it take so long? It’s a bit late for the trusting medication compliant patients in the Dartford area, Alice Rees, Dick Scott, John Phillips, Michael Egan, Ken Oxford, Boysie Parker, on injections while the health authority claimed that it wouldn’t be worth it, to give him the liver transplant he need. Ken Oxford died diabetic, losing one leg then the other as the wretched Dartford Clubhouse ’staff’ visited bringing Guinness and cigarettes and total strangers to gawp at poor Ken, who had worked as a Clubhouse receptionist for years without pay. That bullying, chemical, psychological and physical exists in the mental health is in no doubt. Obviously any evidence of bullying is kept from accreditors and important influential visitors. Although there was bullying and favouritism at the Dartford Clubhouse, the same patients expected to do the washing up, the same patients rewarded for their minimal efforts with trips abroad and expenses. When Dr Stoat visited in the late nineties he saw none of this. On the actual day of Dr Stoat’s visit members and staff were allocated their stations and each member rehearsed as to what they were to be doing when Dr Stoat arrived.  Preparations started days in advance, the visit rehearsed from start to finish. Self-harmers, disruptive patients, scapegoats and anyone likely to ask awkward questions were given the day off or stationed away from the tour route. Graham White was given the job of showing the politician around accompanied by the Clubhouse manager. Having sung the Clubhouses praises in America and Europe the fellow was well rehearsed in the dogma that the clubhouse passes off as therapy. The same spiel that prospective members are given as they work their way through orientation whereby they are indoctrinated with the clubhouse model. It is quite understandable that the Clubhouse go to this trouble to create a false impression of what was often a stressed environment. Again like MIND they are a charitable organisation often forced to employ inexperienced and unqualified staff who, thanks to an under-funded mental health service often had patients that required professional help dumped on their doorstep. As the admission wards closed and with them the local day hospital the Psychiatrists and Social Services had and still do, have no alternative to referring acutely ill patients to the Clubhouse and MIND.

It can be argued that to provide any mental health service lies and deception must be employed to get any funding, then again there is an argument for ceasing to label people mentally ill because they do not conform to standards of heath and behaviour dictated by a democratic government. That the government is ill informed and that Dr Stoat, spokesman for the national health on television and advisor to the prime minister should have been deceived is no surprise to those who work in the mental health services. You can be sure that the plight of Ken Oxford and the rest of the club members who died well before their allotted three score and ten were not on the agenda that day.

 

 

 

 

 

Did the Clubhouse staff run off with my share of a Clubhouse lottery win as another patient told me? Did they leave out other patients or just steal my share? I heard a rumour that this happened and there is some circumstantial evidence that indicates that this may have been the case. John Hall was talking to Amy in the upstairs office at the Clubhouse. But that’s thirty thousand pounds, then Amy Tebbutt said be quiet then Amy Tebbut approached me in the clubhouse in the upstairs office and told me that I would not know what to do with a lottery win. I found Staff members Correen Campbell and Christine Aikenhead hiding under the table before an after- hours meeting in the clubhouse cafe. Were they discussing the lottery win? Staff member Correen Campbell bought a house about that time even though she had not been working that long. Christine Aikenhead bought a new car as did Silvia Clive who took a holiday to Egypt and Paul Wright bought a new motorbike. I remember that I asked to check the lottery ticket, but Graham White was there and said why and somehow I dropped the idea.

There was a low standard of care and a high mortality rate among the patients. The staff were asked to be key workers for five patients and I remember them saying we can only look after two or three at the most. ’Well we just won’t do it. Paul Wright used to be a road manager for rock band AC/CD among others. ‘I set up the gear for John Martyn, went to Jeff Beck’s yearly party he told me’. Now he was following Eleanor Jukes, a habitual self-harmer, around all day. Amy Tebbutt would dote on Chalky White, and Brian Taylor. Sylvia Clive would look after Boysie Parker. Silvia Clive brought beer to Boysie Parkes, an alcoholic and cirrhotic, she said it was the only way to get him to do anything. Boysie was once a porter at Stone House and Correen would take Guinness and tobacco to Ken Oxford when he was hospitalised with diabetes. Ken he lost one leg then the other. Denise Tester was not the only patient at the Clubhouse to commit suicide. Ann Marie Bartle was an attractive young patient who jumped off a roof to her death and a young fellow died an overdose I think. There was bullying at the clubhouse Michelle Oakins who died of an aneurysm and a women who worked in the kitchen called Janet were the victims. Just called horrible that sort of thing, verbal abuse quite mild upsetting. People would upset them. Club member Dick Scott was critical of the clubhouse, he died of a heart attack and so did his best friend Alice Rees, also critical of the clubhouse. John Phillips and Brian Taylor, both medication compliant died of heart attacks.

John Hall and Mick Rutherford, friends to this day may know more about the alleged lottery win, seeing that Mick Rutherford told me that John Hall bought a house. Oh no, he was left some money he said. I never asked where he got the money from. Was he saying ‘oh no it wasn’t with lottery money’? I wondered if anyone who attended the Clubhouse might know something, about the rumour concerning an alleged lottery win, and have noticed the high mortality rate. But I decided that even if it was true no-one would admit it and that they would somehow cover their tracks. I would be up against a gang, even if I could get anyone to investigate. For a while a woman called June ran the clubhouse and there was a falling out when she asked Andrew Fields to adjust the attendance figures. Andrew left as such an act went against his Christian beliefs. The clubhouse was next door to Dr Sharma’s research facility. Dr Sharma was struck off for selling research sample tablets to the local hospital, Darent Valley.  For days before his visit, the clubhouse staff and members were cleaning and organising, arranging for troublesome members to have the day off and making sure that it was the spoilt favourite club members that came into contact with the M.P. were on hand to show him around.

The impostor patient has never had it so good. This fellow who has usually started his career as a professional patient by being admitted to the psychiatric ward over some social indiscretion, finds the lodgings acceptable, and the three square meals agreeable, accompanied as it is with some pocket money. This patient usually makes himself useful on the ward by acting as the eyes and ears of the staff, grassing his way to the security he craves. In this way he is often the first to hear of any opportunities meant for the genuinely ill, and as he still has all of his faculties is often able to jump the queue when it comes to any perks like more favourable employment or accommodation. Time consuming and parasitic this fellow is only too keen to not only pray on the system but the other patients who he manipulates uses to advance himself. As if these were not enough problems for an increasingly under- funded mental health service, the criminal fraternity has increasingly been admitted into the mental health service, as a direct result of overcrowding, and because with a staggering decrease in-patient beds and the demise of the occupational and industrial therapy departments, there is little or no chance of their having to remain in hospital for very long, and no chance of their being made to work.

 

Graham White. I first had the misfortune to meet this fellow many years ago when he reported me quite wrongly to the staff at Joyce Green hospital. I had a flyer through the post about an art rock artist. Graham’s modus operandi had not changed. He has been manipulative in the past and is a user who is unlikely to pull his weight. He befriends staff and then waits to find any confidence which he will use to further himself.  He told me that he knew the then leader of the clubhouse Marcus Gramps had taken drugs. Whether he was blackmailing him I do not know but I do know that Graham White has, according to Mandy Payne, left a female patient pregnant while preferring to go on buckshee trips abroad with the clubhouse, 17 at the last count, rather than fulfil his responsibility as a parent. He moved into the group homes and a MIND flat with a pile of pornography which he made no attempt to conceal even when women entered the flat and has a preoccupation with older women, the theme of his pornography collection, and female psychiatric patients. Can you imagine the disruption he caused in the MIND house? Before he was in the MIND house he was in the group home at Stone. At the clubhouse we were expected to work for a minimum wage then for each hour we worked work an hour voluntarily for the clubhouse. Graham would not even take his turn washing up let alone do any voluntary work. I wonder how he got away with that knowing what he did. When Marcus Gramps left I think Julie took over. Andrew Fields left rather than fix the attendance records, as he was a Christian. Then Julie left and Amy Tebbut took over. Her son was an addict by the way. That may be relevant because if Graham found out and he will make it his business to find such information he may again have used that as a lever to get more trips abroad, and the attention he craves. While at the group home he refused to do his share of house work. I told him on the Saturday I intended to visit Denise Tester on Sunday to collect a photograph of her Scottie dog as I had said I would draw its portrait for her. Denise was a cleaner at Stonehouse hospital who was suffering from depression. But by Sunday the housework needed doing as the social worker was visiting on Monday and Graham announced that he was going to the Welsh Tavern, and as it was obvious that he would be in no state to do any house work when he returned, I had to cancel the visit and tidy up. That night Denise took her own life. She was found the next morning any empty wine bottle and tablet bottle by her.

One morning he told me had taken a couple of temazepam and later when he was out I admit I took a look around his room to see what tablets he had to try and ascertain what was going on because he had been told by his social worker not to take them in the group home. This was said in front of me and I suppose Graham was showing off to me in a ‘nobody tells me what to do way’. It may have been wrong to snoop in his diary but when I saw an entry that read ‘glad that Denise is dead I won’t have to listen to her common voice anymore’ I can’t help wondering if there wasn’t any malice towards me as I had told him I was drawing a picture for her. Around this time he showed me a book. This is where I get the symptoms of depression. I learn them and tell the doctor, it’s easy.

While the staff and Graham White indulged in trips abroad, the club members were expected to cook and wait on the chosen few. Sadly the neglect that occurred when the staff refused to look after their allotted five patients and would only be key worker to three showed in the high mortality rate and today being remembrance Sunday, and the mental health little better than a guerrilla war zone, I will name the fallen. Alice Rees and Richard Scott active critics of the clubhouse, both died from heart attacks. Ken Oxford, who was a faithful receptionist who worked voluntarily. Boysie Parker an ex porter from Stone house. Ann Marie a younger patient took her own life, Michelle Oakins bullied by staff and patients, died from an aneurysm. Throughout these tragedies Graham continued to have his own way at the clubhouse as he prepared for his next trip abroad.  He manipulated Silvia Clive and Amy Tebbutt who were in their sixties at the clubhouse, and is obsessed with his mother who he blames for putting him away when he broke windows in his parent’s house. He does get threatening when he is in danger of being discovered. He hides behind staff, and makes a pretence of helping but he is all hot air, his real achievements thin on the ground, and his manipulative self- serving achievements many. He had relationships with other patients at the clubhouse and manipulative jealousy may have played a part in his neglect of duty the night Denise died. I told him I intended to visit her and though I was not interested in her as a girlfriend, I think he may have thought differently. The idea of Graham White being near vulnerable patients doesn’t bear thinking about. He is a truly selfish individual who needs professional help from a qualified psychiatrist and psychologist, and I’m afraid that this help may only be found as an inpatient, perhaps on a secure unit. In my opinion he poses a threat to society. To make matters worse, his sister and brothers work for the social services and may be covering for him, as when the finger of suspicion turned on him at the clubhouse, where for a while he was the subject of gossip, his sister turned up on a placement.

You can’t help thinking that those who play the mental health system, either as impostor patients, or as staff merely working to feather their own nests, are contributing to the high mortality rate of the legitimately mentally ill.

After I left Stonehouse hospital my father visited me for a while, but my parents move away. Though we have exchanged notes on birthday and Christmas card we did not speak to each other for 17 years, and thought that it would be too stressful to confront these issues. My sister visited me once a year but she was abusive, moaning about money, undermining my work with comments and accusation. It is pointless communicating people who, on hearing you are ill turn up with a handful of gimme and abusive remarks, as if I owe them anything.

 

 

Liz Brown was very slight of build and could not have been 5 foot tall. Her face resembled that of Fuchsia Groan, the heroine of Mervyn Peake’s Gormanghast. As a teenager Liz had been treated at the Priory Ticehurst House in Sussex, in the adolescent unit. As an adult, Liz was a patient at Orchard House Psychiatric Unit at Joyce Green Hospital, Dartford, and at Little Brook Hospital. Though I was introduced to Liz by the staff at advance housing who noticed that we had a common interest in art I did not become her friend though I noticed that she had her own compartment in the fridge, and that she would sometimes sketch in the garden. Liz accepted a move to the more independent MIND housing project where she one of the flats in the house where I was staying.

      MIND was once mainly run by and for the middle aged and elderly long term mentally ill men and women who at the time made up the majority of national health psychiatric patients. These patients, usually suffering from depression following divorce or bereavement, often exasperated by keeping up the working class or middle class pretence, were legitimate patients who required only basic supervision and posed a minimal or no threat to safety of health workers. The 1990’s care in the community programme put the emphasis on short term financial savings. Everyone knows that the old hospitals have closed down but few understand the disruption caused by the closure of the day facilities, the day hospitals. Occupational therapy departments at the day hospitals rehabilitated and restored confidence to many patients who attended who were then able to return to work or find new employment.

As a result local Social Services were forced to dump patients who needed a higher level of support than a mental health charity could provide on MIND’S doorstep. So instead of having to cope with large majority of sad depressed but unchallenging patients, MIND are now expected to cope with patients with more serious psychiatric conditions, conditions that often require in-patient or day patient treatment that stopped with the closure of the old asylums.. To make matters worse, to coincide with the care in the community programme Kent County Council saw fit to close the group homes, shared houses that had accommodated the long term mentally ill living in the community. As if this situation was not bad enough, the Swanley social service mental health team were advertising for more social workers and besides being understaffed, were and still are overworked.

The previous occupant of Liz‘s flat, Mathew, had been transferred to Broadmoor following his conviction for stabbing a local GP in 2000. This incident was reported in the national press, on the front page of some newspapers. At his trial a year later Mathew was reported to have said that ‘they had been winding him up’. I wondered if the staff knew something as one of them had told me that Mathew was upset about a month before the incident. Around that time another of the Mind housing officers, Alison Gordon went drinking at a pub in Gaol Lane, then driven her Citroen Deux Chevaux to the local woods and hung herself. A third housing officer, Georgia Harley she could not believe the attitude of some of the staff at Mind Dartford before she left. Shortly after Mathew been sent to Broadmoor, John Manzoni, then head of MIND Dartford left to start another job. Dartford MIND employed Sally Pearson, who had only worked with the mentally ill for a year. Prior to that and for ten years previous she had worked with criminals. Previously she had run a probation hostel. The character attributes of a probation hostel manager are different from those needed by the manager of a local branch of MIND. Those responsible for employing the new manager may have thought that the Mathew incident would happen again which goes to show how out of touch they were. The Fundamentalist Christian staff, Jill Pinder and Dave Baker left the housing staff. Sally replaced them with Natalie Smith and Deirdre Di Palma who were given a job with no specific agenda because the government kept changing the mental health service never presenting a clear plan. The government seemed more concerned with reassuring the public and transferring responsibility to the charities. As a result the staff were obliged to invent their own work plan. They informed us that they would be holding monthly health and safety checks. With an electronic thermometer their symbol of authority they would test the tap water for Legionnaire’s disease. We were told that this was a requirement of the housing association. When I telephoned the housing association they had no knowledge of such a requirement. These inspections were erratically timed and often at a few days’ notice. Liz hated these intrusions. Anyone who is involved in creative work knows that privacy is often essential to the process. Artists usually want to show only finished work if at all. The visits were disruptive, but the staff argued that no-one turned up to their house meetings, and that left on their own patients would not only deteriorate but they would neglect the property as happened with a previous tenant who after refusing to admit visitors for a year was found to have covered the entire floor surface of his flat with rubbish and litter, enough to fill twenty bin liners. In the change from the more supportive atmosphere of the communal care home, Liz was allowed more freedom, and though she was able to continue with her creative interests she was also free to not eat and become more anorexic. It was clear from the start that MIND were not able to cope with the situation, soon Liz was obviously underweight but when, soon after she had moved in, she attended a Summer Fayre run by the local MIND office. No-one seemed to notice let alone care, and for the first time I had to notify the social services myself, a pattern that was to repeat itself many times. Subsequently when I did ask MIND for help they actually refused to notify the social services merely adding ’what can we do?’ leaving Liz’s fate in my hands. 

Living in the same house as Liz for the last years of her life I decided to keep my distance early on, only talking to her when I ran into her by chance when I was leaving or returning to the building. If I noticed that she was sick or that the lights had not been on in her flat for a couple of days I notified the social services and often she received help as a result. I told her I was doing this and she had no problem with this. I soon found that if I was persistent the social services would visit her and put her back in touch with the appropriate health workers, specifically the Red House eating disorders unit at Maidstone who would take her in as an in-patient or day patient. Friends and Family untrained charity workers, even trained professional mental health workers are no more able to cope with the anorexic patient than perform heart surgery. Liz was devious, her illness made her so and she had learnt how to fool anyone close to her long ago. This meant that even if she allowed regular visitors they would be met by a highly rehearsed and practised act involving clothing skilfully worn and adjusted to conceal weight loss and a manner and conversation so polite and a disposition so sweet that she could delude almost anyone, but coming from a background of psychiatric care where her act would have been immediately seen as transparent, and not seeing her on a daily basis I was usually lucky enough to notice when Liz was drastically underweight.

The Supporting People initiative was part of the nationwide response to the disasters that the Care in the Community initiative had brought. In part the idea was to make care agencies accountable for their action and was a safeguard against unscrupulous landlords who ran hostels for the mentally ill for profit, exploiting the patients. But the council now wanted evidence of staff patient participation, requiring Mind to create projects to support their claim for finance.

 

In the spring of 2005 MIND housing staff had been full of enthusiasm for a new resident Andrew Upstill aka Andrew  MacPherson. As soon as he arrived I heard him say ’Liz and David they look so ill, Idont care if they die.’ He ingratiated himself with MIND by building a garden structure with the fancy decking seen on improve your garden television programmes. Though at least half the residents including Liz were against these improvements MIND insisted that the modification of the garden go ahead and then said that they would be putting in new flower beds around the structure. I warned the staff that the garden would become unmanageable with no other residents apart from me interested in gardening, and only a weekly visit from a part time gardener, but Deirdre insisted. A landscape gardener was invited to visit and give an estimate. I had net curtains that allowed me to see out but stopped those outside looking in. Deirdre told the gardener that one of the residents was a ‘poof’. Deirdre decided to give the job to Andrew. I was told by a MIND staff member that Andrew’s father had money. His father would give him a large sum of money if he got a job. I don’t know if the work in the garden counted towards this deal. He needed a home for his children while he waited for a court decision regarding their custody. If he could not put them up for the three days a week that he was allowed the court might not be so favourable toward him in their judgment. Having donated his time and effort into ’improving’ the garden, he then set about moving his children, two girls of junior school age, into his flat on a part time basis. He charmed Deirdre and Natalie into allowing his children to use one of his rooms as a bedroom and installed bunk beds. Natalie and Deirdre visited Andrew regularly, giving this clearly quite capable patient support that might have been better directed elsewhere.

 

 You can imagine the noise and disruption this fellow caused, with his children and garden project, in a house meant for the mentally ill. Andrew was desperate for partial custody rights for his children, and allegedly for his father’s money. The desperation caused stress the stress in turn manifested in his behaviour. Andrew became for a while the life and soul of the party, encouraging female residents to drink, offering Liz alcohol all the time knowing that these residents were on medication and that alcohol is contra-indicated. The garden project was not just an example of favouritism toward Andrew by Deirdre and Natalie. The garden structure would, while the flower beds were  weeded and full of new plants, provide a fine example of  a staff led project when the staff renewed their application for the Supporting People grant they needed to claim a hundred pounds a week for looking after the residents. 

Andrew did not need much support. To be fair it must have been harrowing for him to have to look after his children, feed them put them to bed then get them ready for school the next morning from a house full of long term psychiatric patients. Though he was desperate he was a patient and good father but he was not able to show the same qualities to all the residents. The garden project was a straight transaction between staff and Andrew. In return for working in the garden he and his children were given lodgings. The staff encouraged and supported Andrew while Liz was left to deteriorate. Liz declined Andrews’s offers of alcohol and friendship. She had her own friends.

Liz’s self-harm scars on her arms had faded to white, indicating that she had been through that phase. I was shocked when Tom the caretaker told me that Liz had self-harmed recently, but not surprised. Something or someone was triggering Liz‘s negative behaviour. Tom asked Andrew not to leave sharp tools lying around the common room. However Andrew continued to do so, and turned up to a house meeting sharpening a chisel. Seeing that Andrew had been allowed to move his children into the house, Liz’s upstairs neighbour Linda Sheppard moved her boyfriend John in. Both these actions against the rules set out in the tenancy agreement. Andrew held a garden dinner party to which only certain residents were invited. With loud music, wine and beer they sat in the structure until past midnight leaving bottles and glasses to be cleared up the next day and a bunch of house keys be returned from a garden table to the fellow’s door the following morning. With reluctance MIND eventually moved Andrew on though they have astonishingly elected him to their board of governors. He left behind him boxes of craft materials in the basement, open boxes containing modelling knives, scalpels, surgical blades and razor blades for all to see, as a leaving gift. I was left with the unpleasant task of disposing of these items as they were obviously a potential trigger to a self-harmer like Liz. One cut in funding had a particular devastating effect on Liz and at the end of the summer term 2005 she was told that her art course was to close down. I believe that this would also cause Liz to reduce her intake of food.                                               

The situation in the MIND flat Liz above didn’t improve either. The Linda’s boyfriend regularly shouted abuse at another female resident who dared to answer him back, and he used to watch the television into the early hours volume turned up contemptuous of the other residents adding to the mounting stress Liz was enduring. Not one to complain Liz took it out on herself establishing a diet regime which caused her illness to escalate until her immune system was compromised.  MIND staff were aware of tensions in the house but did little except organize the gardening project. The only other action they took was to continue with their monthly health and safety checks. In her sleep deprived state and subject to these disruptions it is no wonder her anorexia became life threatening. With unsuitable residents adding to her distress, Liz was too tired to face the day and continue with her artwork. Thus demoralized she responded the only way she knew how, by reducing her food intake which in the environment of an institution would have been enough to attract the attention of qualified staff. Not so in the community, where Liz was isolated, living on her own. She was visited by MIND staff but managed to hide the fact that she was dangerously underweight.

I was furious at MIND and Andrew for the disruption they caused with their garden project. I put my anger into my artwork, I had a chance to show work at the yearly exhibition at Hall Place with the user led art group Centrepieces, based in Crayford.

There was enough negativity in the MIND house to trigger Liz’s anorexia.  Liz told me that she felt isolated in the community. And what a community it is for the mentally ill to exist in. With society progressively more violent, more intolerant and more crowded the psychiatric patient is also expected to tolerate prejudice, usually under the influence of unwanted and unnecessary ‘medication’.

Liz’s options were constantly being reduced. Leaving the house to visit the shops or the park was an ordeal for Liz. Though local residents have free healthcare and the benefit system to fall back on, they have been no different to the rest of the country in adopting the fashionable uptight and selfish attitude of the 21st century. Sadly the attitude of the community toward the care in the community patient has been deplorable. There has been absolutely no attempt whatsoever by successive governments of any party to educate the community as to what to expect from the care in the community programme. On the 18th of August 2005 social workers, accompanied by a psychiatrist rang my doorbell at 11 am. They said that they were seriously concerned about Liz and could they have access to the inside door to her flat. After checking their identity card, though I recognised them as mental health workers, I let them in but they were unable to enter the flat as they did not have a key. I advised them to contact MIND office as I knew MIND had a pass key, and left them to discuss the matter in privacy. About an hour later MIND housing officers knocked at the door saying they had some bad news and I asked them if Liz was dead and they said she was and then I asked them if she had taken her own life and they said they couldn't say too much so I asked them if it was an overdose and they said pills were present but they did not know if it was overdose, accidental or deliberate. The Police were investigating and had said there was no evidence of foul play

A few days later I was asked to help assess the situation in Liz's flat, by a MIND housing officer who said that she was too upset to enter the flat on her own; I discovered Liz's diaries, approximately ten journals, note books. I felt these journals, with the extensive collection of photographs were an important record of her life, even more relevant than her artwork. To me I felt that it meant that her life had not been such a waste after all. I managed to read a couple of entries in the diaries before I noticed the atmosphere in the room becoming uncomfortable. One of these read ’Am I pretty? ... cry  myself to sleep for hours at night’, another merely described a day out. At the very least a professional health worker would be able to study this record and perhaps understand the nature of her illness an illness that is becoming more prevalent amongst young people.

 

Any differences were put to one side as Liz’s property was cleared from her flat. In hospital a psychiatric patient has few possessions. When discharged into the community often a patient will try to compensate by hoarding. Liz had spent the money she saved on food on art materials (which found their way to the user led art group), books, and distressingly, a wardrobe, draws and cupboards full of clothes from the catalogues which she used to hide her illness. All these along with her artwork and related resources had to be taken away and in the end the couple who had were clearing her flat asked in despair if they could leave a few of her remaining possessions in the flat as they found the task too distressing. I was worried for her artwork as so often such work is disrespected. I was informed by MIND that Anne Marie took Liz’s artwork. Liz had feared that father would throw her work away. I feel Liz had more to offer with her artwork but perhaps she made her point by choosing not to use her talent to convey her illness, but to be apart from it.                                      

I asked to move into her flat as the noise from the upstairs flat was annoying, and so that Becky could have a downstairs flat that she needed being unsteady on her feet. The staff agreed. Moving into Liz’s old flat I found the possessions that her executors had left behind. There were some plants on the windowsill, some very cheap jewellery in a little wooden box, a silver ring a silver cross, some cassettes, some glass decorations, and in a draw in the kitchen and on her bedside cabinet, some boiled sweets. I had rescued some odds and ends from the dustbin, I have always tidied up the bins after the residents who have not always been well enough to put their rubbish out properly. I found her anorexia videos, programmes about the illness that she had recorded from the television. I found a door key but would not enter the flat. I should have rescued her diaries but did not. However I did find a couple of photograph booth pictures of Liz and a notebook that had hardly been used. I made a note of the following table I saw in this notebook.

 

 Sunday 10th July   10266 steps 3.16km 116 kcal   steps:kcal 88                               Mon     11th                    approx. 4500 steps ( only entry for this day ).

 Tues   12th               12846 steps 3.98km 129 kcal steps:kcal 99

 Wed 13th                11483 steps: 3.56km   108 kcal steps: kcal 106   

  Thurs 14th               7680 steps:  2.38km   83 kcal steps: kcal 93

  Fri 15th                   4348 steps: 1.35km   51 kcal    steps; kcal 86

 

                           The Footstep per Kilometre ratio is consistent where the Footstep per Kcal ratio, that I have added, is not. Though the record is only for five days, the date shows it to be one month before her death. It is possible that the calorie amount represents daily intake and that she continued a regime of minimal food intake and exercise to work off the little amounts he did eat until the end. It is possible and probable that there were days when she ate nothing at all. All around her flat were little tins, other containers, and packets of boiled sweets, each sweet having a calorific value of 19. Although none of the entries in the table are multiples of 19 perhaps the other calories were tea. Black tea is well known amongst anorexics to be 1 calorie. So perhaps after pigging out on a whole six boiled sweets she decided to cut back on the tea and just have two cups that day, making sure she burnt off the evil calories by walking a distance of 3.16 km a distance she arrived at by counting her 10266 footsteps that day.  Whatever the calorie intake, the entry says little for those paid to care for her if she was able to carry out such a regime and the attendant passing back and forth of blame and responsibility says even less.

Staff at the Red House regretted that compulsory admission was not the current policy, even though they were aware that Liz’s immune system was damaged by years of anorexia. Liz Brown had a body mass index of 17.5. Compared to the slightly lower Body Mass Indices flaunted by super models, some claiming as low as sixteen, and those under eighteen banned from fashion shows in Milan, Liz’s condition might not appear so extreme but this 17.5 is more than likely the weight she left the Red House with. She would regularly drop below this reading but would stay away from staff when she was not eating. As she was less than five foot the 17.5 puts her well weight or target weight at under six stone to begin with. Staff at the Red House probably did not know that Liz had, before and up until the time of her death, had to share facilities with another resident who, after falling down the stairs, was treated for MRSA infection at St Mary’s Hospital Sidcup and had only just returned to the MIND house. MIND staff, any of whom could have carried the disease back to the house after visiting, gave no instruction regarding this matter and to this day there are no washing or toilet facilities for specifically for staff, visitors, or maintenance workers on the premises. For Liz this was a cause for concern for she had an immune system damaged by years of anorexia and taking medication on a very empty stomach. It is also likely that the staff at the Red House were unaware of a mark the size of a half crown on Liz’s forehead that looked like either a bruise or an infection.

Liz Brown’s Post Mortem was inconclusive. A blood test was taken but appears to have not contained enough toxins to provide a definite verdict of suicide. Liz’s body was found, apparently appearing restful, on the floor. If this is true, and there is no reason to believe that it is not, then it indicates that Liz died as a result of her illness. Always in hindsight there are events that could have been taken as warning signs or cries for help but were at the time ignored or misread. Why did I not see and report her again deteriorating health. In the weeks before she died Liz actively avoided me. I noticed her creeping by my window; through the net curtains I saw her walk by she walked by with an apple, perhaps she was trying to convince me she was eating.

                                                                                                                                        Sadly again, Liz was able to hoard property that she did not want to be parted from and this increasing and unforeseen problem that has become part of care in the community may have been a factor in her illness. Liz was about to be readmitted to hospital under section but had been informed of this decision by a health worker, who probably thought that he or she was giving Liz a little time to pack a few things for her stay.

 There is no doubt in my mind that Liz was an accomplished artist. I have seen work by her dating back to 1989 and over the years Liz attended her classes and gained qualifications. Liz learnt skills in art that ranged from realistic life drawing, and this in itself is significant as it contradicts the popular conception of the artist who suffers from mental illness as being clumsy and childlike in their art. Liz was not. In fact it was not uncommon to see an artist who was exceptional talented at realistic depiction in the old hospital art rooms as opposed to the bizarre and neo-surreal artwork that the public are expected to accept as representative of the art of the mentally ill.

Liz also showed a proficiency in a wide range of crafts that used to take place in the Occupational Therapy department, before it was phased out with the care in the community programme. The Occupational Therapy department was part of the Psychiatric Day Hospital and their closure has been particularly damaging to the patients living in the community. Here the day patient could pursue a wide range of crafts from the often ridiculed basket weaving to knitting and making stuffed toys to weaving cookery woodwork metal work printing and of course the art room was part of the occupational therapy department. Liz excelled at cake decoration and at tapestry. She was a keen photographer and sketched from her photography. She kept an extensive image bank of magazine and newspaper cuttings. Today Liz’s work would be described as that of an Outsider artist, but sadly this term has yet to be accepted in this country like it has in America, France, Ireland or Russia. Though she would set up a stall at craft fairs she never made the money that her work deserved.

Though there is provision for force feeding under section 63 of the  Mental health Act, in practice this, along with the constant one to one nursing often required, seems to out of the realm of the Little brook staff. Though Liz’s doctor at the Red House eating disorders unit at Maidstone regrets the situation, the unit does not take compulsory patients as the expense and potential for disruption forbids it. It seems that the days of the nurse patiently sitting at her station outside the side room for weeks or months until the anorexic patient reaches a target weight is a thing of the past. In the old days when the old psychiatric hospitals took the burden of the chronically ill, the incurable, and the elderly from the psychiatric units the anorexic patient would rewarded by a walk to the day room, where they could start to socialise again. If the treatment continued to be successful this would be followed by shopping trips, occupational therapy and eventually a trip home followed by increasing leave.             

 

 

             

Liz was to have been readmitted to Little Brook Hospital. This psychiatric unit is situated next to the old Stone House Hospital gradually replacing the old asylum, but with a vastly diminished allocation of in-patient beds and day-patient facilities. At that time Little Brooke had recently found fame as the hospital that was treating Andreas Grassl, better known as the 'Piano Man', who was found on the beach at the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, by police, on 7th April 2005. Andreas would not talk when questioned, and carried no identification. He was taken to Little Brook and, still mute, he was kept on the locked ward for a month before being transferred to an open ward. Though he steadfastly refused to talk, he did however draw a picture of a piano, an image he drew repeatedly. He was taken to a piano in the hospital chapel where, according to staff, he played ’meandering melancholy airs’, for two hours. This was no mere reverie. Soon his performances, now timed at up to 4 hours, were identified as a selection of excerpts from Swan Lake, the Lennon and McCartney songbook, and the work of the Italian composer Ludivico Einoudi. He was given the use of an upright piano which was kept on the ward. When not playing he was seen to draw more pianos and write music, keeping a folder of sheet music that he carried with him. The newspapers ran his story. Mental Health workers betrayed the rule of patient confidence by talking to the press about the 'Piano Man' who refused to speak.

At first the papers were sympathetic, speculating as to his identity and inviting the public to submit information and theories. The August edition of the Fortean Times, a magazine devoted to the paranormal contained a two page article about Grassl. ’Who is the Piano Man?‘ the article’s headline asked. Ironically two days after social services workers found Liz's dead body at the MIND house in Swanley, the 'Piano Man' broke his silence and was almost immediately discharged freeing his bed for another patient. The irony is more profound because the previous year a patient suffering from the same illness as Liz, Anorexia Nervosa was refused admittance to Little Brook despite the fact that doctors had given her only five days to live.  Almost as soon as he spoke opinion turned against him.  A ’member of staff’ claimed that far from being the virtuoso musician that both his social worker and  ward manager had claimed he could barely play a note, and often tapped one key continuously. The Piano Man broke his silence  on the 19th August, by the 23rd he was not only without talent but had ’confessed to being gay’ though it is fair to say that any patient who does not run with the pack in the Dartford area is called gay by the staff. Though the same paper that outed Andreas Grassl printed an article the following day in which his father denied the allegation, adding that he if anyone would have noticed such a thing, another daily had reassessed and downgraded his talent. No longer a probable concert pianist or ballet company ‘repetiteur‘, the Piano Man’s lawyer, Jurgen Linhart, told the press that ‘Andreas ‘had learned to play a keyboard by himself.’ Though he denied that the Piano Man had any special talent, Mr Linhart added ’But it is simply wrong to suggest that he just tapped one key all the time. Josef Grassl, the Piano man’s father confirmed that Andreas Grassl was a talented musician who, besides playing a simple keyboard alongside his younger sister, also entertained relatives on an accordion. Perhaps it is simply wrong to call the Piano Man gay and perhaps it is wrong and a little insulting to call someone who has been mute for four and a half months a fraud but that is what Dr Stoat MP for Dartford and government spokesman for health did in the national and local press. By September the first, according to the Dartford Times, Dr Stoat was saying that the Piano Man should ’be placed under a European arrest warrant and brought back here to face charges. He’s guilty of wasting police and NHS time.’ Dr Stoat was apparently reacting to a report in a national paper that claimed that Andreas Grassl was a fame hungry young man who wanted to appear on German television. The paper claimed that Mr Grassl was a fame hungry young man who wanted to appear on German television. His silence had been a publicity stunt. He had written to celebrities asking for advice on how to become famous. The Piano Man was an impostor patient who stood to make the estimated cost of his treatment by selling his story to the papers, more if he wrote a book about his experiences.  The article went on to say that the Piano man was now back with his family in Prosdorf, Bavaria. The family home was surrounded by reporters who were tracking his every move. Two years later, the Piano Man has yet to sell his story or publish a book. It is likely that the press no longer surround the Grassl residence.

 Surprisingly Dr Stoat did not accuse the Piano Man of blocking the very bed that Liz Brown needed to stay alive though the fact that he started to speak just two days after she was found dead on the floor in her flatlet suggests that someone may have informed him of this fact in an attempt to make him talk. He certainly understood English well enough. The fact that he ‘knew what was going on all the time’, would have been enough to enrage the spiteful gossips that try to control the staff that work for the Dartford and Gravesham mental health service.  Certainly one member of staff saw fit to discredit Andrass Grassl in the daily papers of Tuesday 23rd August 2005. Whether this was an individual or collective act I do not know. Certainly Dr Stoat appeared to pick up on the suspicion cast on Andreas Grassl , whether he was egged on by the press or was directly in touch with Littlebrooke staff does not matter much. It is hard to dislike Dr Stoat. When he has been asked to speak on the news he presents a reassuring character.

                                        

Though Andrew had left by early summer, the upstairs neighbours were still playing up. Then new resident who proved too ill for supported housing began taking up MIND resources. She fell down the stairs contracted MRSA while in hospital and was moved to another house where mind staff doted on her despite the fact she had an able bodied and supportive family which Liz did not. She moved back shortly before Liz died, playing the same record over and over again until a ground floor flat became available, which it did when Liz died. Just because no-one noticed her illness entering another acute stage for what must have been at least some weeks may imply neglect but who could say that if that neglect was wilful? After Liz died the staff expressed a wish to destroy her diaries. I thought this was insensitive and suspicious. Perhaps Liz documented the abuse she had to endure. I was told that her friend Ann-Marie had taken her diaries, along with her artwork, by a social worker. The fact that the drain to the bath in Liz’s old flat has been blocked with what looks suspiciously like ashes may be just a coincidence. But Natalie and Deirdre’s comments on entering her Liz’s flat just added to my misgiving. Natalie looked at the wall storage unit, full of Liz’s art and craft materials books diaries photographs image bank and art and craft work, and said ‘Call that work?’. The Deirdre made some comment about Liz having ‘had her fun’. Deirdre described patient’s benefit as ‘owt for nowt‘. Then there have been the everyday undermining comments, the drop in the voice when mentioning an achievement. If they were able to make such callous remarks, they were probably capable of starting rumours.

I have had to suffer verbal abuse since I moved to Swanley ten years ago. Soon after I moved in one of the residents, Linda, shouted in the hall, ‘I don’t want that poof living here’. At ASDA’s the women at the cigarette counter would point me out as a ‘poof’ to each other and to customers. Soon the men who collect the trolleys were in on the act as were some of the women at the tills. For years I have had to suffer the taunts from not only from some of the ASDA staff but from the customers they told. Once I saw a red faced trolley collector tell the woman at the till in Holland and Barrett’s that I was a ‘poof’.

And so the rumour spread. Soon I could not go shopping without someone pointing the finger. I am not gay but the more you deny it the more they will insist that you are, and if you ignore them they insist just the same. I went shopping in Orpington, Bromley, and occasionally in the West End when I made the journey to buy art materials and books for research. I had to take the bus to Orpington because the female ticket seller and the station master were verbally abusive.

I decided the only way out of the situation was to work and make enough money to move away, so I applied myself to the only things I know how to do, writing and artwork. Under the illusion that honest work would be rewarded I collected research material for a book, part memoir part biography, and enrolled with an art group and a gallery. But the art’s world was more competitive than I imagined.  By the time I had work that was saleable the bullying, which by this time had spread to the supported housing itself, in the form of the same verbal abuse occasionally accompanied by threats. The next door neighbours the street sweeper the dustmen were all verbally abusive. I could not step outside the door for fear of verbal abuse from neighbours or residents visitors.  When Becky was moving into flat 6 I heard her sister and some other people one of whom I now to be her sister talking outside the kitchen window of flat 2 where I was then living; ‘Shall we ask him to help us’ said one, ‘No he’s a poof, the woman said’ said Becky’s sister. Some of Becky’s visitors were rowdy. One of them said as they left the house outside the same window,’ The best thing he can do is move out of here’; a remark that I felt was aimed at me. One visitor was shouting up at Becky’s window one morning at six o clock in the morning;’ I can visit here any time I want’.

I believe it was the same fellow who later called me a poof in the car park by the doctor’s surgeries in Swanley. We exchanged words but I walked away. I ran into him outside the doctor’s surgery, he was with two women; one who I think may be his partner outside the cedars surgery. I took refuge in the surgery and when he followed me in I threatened him with the police. ‘If you call the police I’ll kill you he said. I asked the receptionist to call the police and the fellow walked away. I don’t think that was the start of the verbal abuse at the Cedars surgery, I think the typist at the back of the receptionists work place was already mouthing the word poof at me. After this incident I was met by more hostility by not only the typist but also by an office worker who is quite short and has quite long dark hair. 

Here are some of the homophobic taunts I have had to endure over the years.

‘What’s he doing here?’

‘He won’t get another appointment’.

On one occasion a receptionist asked me point blank' Why do you sleep with men’ On another a patient asked’ What’s wrong with him?’ ‘He’s a poof’ replied the short receptionist. On another occasion the same receptionist said that I looked like I had AIDS.

You can imagine how terrifying it is to be singled out as gay in a surgery that serves a parish that recently voted a British Movement candidate onto the council, in a town with a strong equally homophobic catholic and gypsy presence. Not all are homophobic but some are. I informed Dr Williams about bullying she said to contact social services. I told Dr Williams recently that the receptionists had had ‘a pop’ at me a few times I wonder if this was the reason for the phone not working incident.

It may be that the staff manager will not take any complaint from me seriously as I have a history of mental illness but will be more willing to listen to a health worker. The staff involved are unlikely to admit verbal abuse and it is likely that they will cover in any case as if there is a question of harm as a result, the practise will not want to be held responsible.  I had heard two of the MIND staff tell visitors I was a ‘poof’. First Jill told a visitor. Then just before it was decided that Andrew was to install decking in the garden, Deirdre had said the same thing to a landscape gardener who was giving an estimate for the work. If one of the MIND housing staff told Becky’s sister I was gay perhaps their malicious gossip and incompetence was inspired by the fact that they the MIND staff have admitted to claiming for a service that they are not providing leaving patients at risk. This may account for the verbal bullying I have also had to endure.

A fellow with an ulcer on his leg and another fellow who carried a clear polythene carrier bag full of scraps of paper were harassing people in the high street. They were seen drinking on the bench by the railway bridge, and outside the citizen’s advice. One day they turned up on my doorstep demanding ‘help’ with the same menacing attitude they used to accost passers-by in the high street. At first I wanted to help them and I agreed that they could wait in the house while I phoned the office to see if they would send someone to see these two street drinkers. When they started to make their way to the house I realised that I had fallen for their intimidation and I told them if they did not leave I would call the police, they left angrily. When I saw the fellow with the leg ulcer again he shouted at me calling me names in a threatening way.

After Tom retired a new gardener/handyman turned up. After filling our wheely bins with Dartford MIND office waste he turned up making homophobic remarks to a female resident. He then went on to call me a poof in front of an elderly stranger when clearing the snow. On another occasion he turned up at the weekend and told his 12 year old daughter that I was ‘gay’. More recently he said to another resident that he can’t wait until that poof dies’.  I suspect that his mind has been poisoned by the same staff who wanted to destroy Liz’s diaries, and want to divert attention away from that fact.

I caught the bus to the Bluewater shopping centre the other side of Dartford from Swanley. A fellow who used to work for MIND and left to become a member of the local council was talking to a companion. He pointed me out saying that I was quite a worker in my day, but now they say I have got AIDS. Then he said something that I thought might point to the source of the rumour. ‘You were nothing if you did not work in those days’. It seemed that he was saying that in case I had heard him gossip. But it was also a phrase I had told to one of the MIND housing officers when I was describing what it was like in parts of America with a strong work ethic. Perhaps it was nothing but the rumour was being circulated by the local gossips. This talk worried me enough to have an HIV test more than once because, even though I had not practiced risk taking behaviour, I worried that someone had somehow contaminated me.

Liz’s anorexia was not just a media fuelled obsession, centred on achieving the ‘perfect look’, in relation to her weight. Her illness was also triggered by and a reaction to bullying by people who thought they have a right to interfere in her life by using her as an emotional punch bag when they could not get their own way. Andrew would leave sharp objects about, Linda’s boyfriend would turn up the television knowing that he was tormenting Liz.

Deirdre wants to assert herself and prove she is in charge, because that way she can hide her incompetence. There are mitigating circumstances. Or at least reasons for this trio’s cowardly behaviour. Andrew was afraid of losing custody of his children. Linda’s boyfriend may have been ill, reports vary. Deirdre along with the rest of MIND staff are given an impossible job, by a health authority that has a limited mental health budget, as do the social services, housing association and local authorities. These agencies all delegate work to MIND that they are not trained to do. But there is no excuse for bullying.

Recently a resident was terrorised by an ex-boyfriend who entered her flat by breaking in by breaking a large double glazed downstairs window. It was left to another female resident to call the police and handle the situation. To claim even a small amount of funding MIND have had to agree to take younger residents on short term leases. MIND cannot provide rehabilitation for these residents and in any case the residents sent here now are more likely to have issues with drink or drugs, whereas in the past this problem was kept out of the housing project by previous staff who were able to stand up to both the social services who knowingly send patients with drink or drug problems. They also send patients with dysfunctional families without warning MIND of this potential cause of disruption in the housing project.  But there is no excuse for spreading malicious rumours. Perhaps ‘the lady’ who Becky’s sister referred to was trying to distract attention from the events that occurred during the summer of 2005.

If MIND staff has to sink to this level then it is indicative of their incompetence. If MIND staff continue to be expected to look after the patients that need a higher level of support than they can provide there will be more disruption at the expense of the well behaved residents. If MIND resort to bullying then they should not be surprised when residents become resentful. The fact that MIND staff wanted to destroy Liz’s diaries is suspicious but also suggests she may have documented the bullying she had to endure from not only residents but possibly the staff and local bigots. Because of her slight build and frailty Liz usually went out accompanied by one of her friends or a social worker. I still wonder how much of my account of Liz’s final days found its way into her diaries and if Ann Marie, Liz’s friend was really given these diaries to look after.

 

                                   

 

                                                                                               

 

I was forced to take medication I did not need on and off for twenty years. My parents put me in hospital when I was twenty one and then out on the street for no reason as far as I am concerned.

My father attacked me once when I was a child, and then again when he came back drunk from the pub when I was a teenager, and again when I was in Farnborough psychiatric unit. He set about me and I had to fight him off. He was not serially violent or usually intimidating, he just lost it a few times and each time he had been drinking. I still have a copy of the letter the eminent psychiatrist Dr Dale Beckett wrote to the asking my parents not to visit. Dr Dale Beckett founded the first drug clinic in London and advised the Wooten report. He was the doctor who treated drug users without blaming them.  So I lost my work more than once because of my family and my father was verbally hostile when I and out of earshot the rest are the same when I am with them. They are not so bad on the phone then they turn up and are abusive. They are nice when they want something. I’ll tell you why my parents are so mean and it’s because of their upbringing and the war. My grandfather was a tailor during the depression when nobody could afford a suit. After the war my grandfather bought up surplus uniform material, died it grey and the soldiers told him they were glad to be out of khaki. When I was born my mother and father were homeless and had to stay with my grandfather who had my father redecorate the house, and then he kicked us out of the house. I was two at the time. On my mother’s side her parents would send her and her sisters to the cinema while they rowed and drank gin. My father, like me, won a scholarship, earned a scholarship really, to a good school but had to leave at 14 to earn a living. The war came along and he was posted first to Scotland, the served two years in India, and if what he went through during the depression had a bad effect on him, what he saw in India  was worse, never mind the psychological effect of waiting for the Japanese, who thankfully never got as far as India. But the Japanese and Germans were still talked about and feared by the children in the playground where I grew up. While my father was doing his bit helping to defend the empire. My mother watched the doodle bugs from the Welsh Harp just outside London that started when she was about ten. She lost her brother in the war, I’m not sure exactly what happened, he was shot down and captured at the battle of Crete he was taken prisoner, the Germans killed him. All this affected them psychologically in a world where to complain was to be weak and something had to give and slowly everything became my fault. But there is no excuse for having someone put away and no excuse for the ill treatment I received. There is no excuse for putting someone’s work in the gutter and driving them out of their home. There is no excuse for lying to psychiatrists and condemning someone to unnecessary psychiatric treatment, and then when they are damaged by the treatment turning up with a handful of gimme then being disruptive when they can’t get their own way.

 

Talking of ambulance chasers, the woman appointed my carer, Natalie has been talking about me behind my back. At my exhibition at Bethlem my sister tried to show me up. On another occasion my sister and her husband offered to give me a lift to the Saturday Studio at Bethlem. On the car journey to West Wickham I felt like getting out of the car as I had to put up with uncalled for hostility. But I knew that they would carry on being antagonistic, when they visited over the years they could not leave without making a snide remark or two. On one occasion when they visited I had tripped on a lead on the carpet and the can of wood glue I was holding flew out of my hand as I fell. When it landed the lid fell off and it went everywhere. My sister’s husband asked if I threw the tin of glue in anger after I had explained what had happened. He said it was important that he knew. Why? So he could go running to my parents and ‘warn’ them, thus consolidating his position as a surrogate son, and heir. He is always making snide remarks about me being on benefit when he knows I am entitled to it. His brother committed suicide. Their attitude continued throughout my father’s illness. I went to visit but he was still talking to me as if I was the same person he last saw nearly twenty years ago when he ended up threatening me as I walked away. What can you do when people think they have a right to tell you what to do and they are wrong. You can only walk away when arguing is pointless, when you know that if the situation escalates you will be at a disadvantage. Why disrupt my therapy and work? Was it jealousy, because my sister wanted to be an artist and chose a more reliable career? Was she manipulative because she knew that after father died someone would have to look after my mother, and she did not want the responsibility? Was it because she remembered how none of my mother’s sisters would look after my grandmother leaving the responsibility to my mother? The antagonism goes back generations and I could always understand why they were antagonistic. The depression, the war, the fact that my father turned my parents out of his house, almost conspired to ruin his dreams, then when I started to take an interest in art he was not supportive, not when he locked me out of the house and put my artwork in the street. I still would not mention it but time and again I lost my work because antagonism and a general lack of respect from not only my family but psychiatrists who think that the mentally ill are only fit for menial or factory work. Then on my mother’s side there is a history of rowing where she was with her sisters sent to the cinema while her parents drank and rowed. And my parents rowed for a while and this came back when my father was ill and my sister wants me to look after my mother but I can’t, because I am ill. So I have to leave them to it. By confronting these problems by writing I am avoiding the inevitable conflict that will occur if I talk to them. My sister has been quite manipulative as has my ex-partner who has also been abusive and deceitful. So I never heard from any of them at Christmas except with a card and a present sent through the post. They are behaving appallingly selfishly, but they are comparative strangers to grief and are trying to take it out on me with verbal abuse, arguing blaming, and may not even know what they are doing because they have never been to group therapy where you learn to identify these problems by talking about them in an environment where it is understood that the conversation goes no further.

 

 

On other occasions I had to own up to things I never did just to get a bed in the madhouse. In a way I resent having to write instead of painting and drawing, but I am using a therapeutic approach that Liz Brown showed me and am pleased to carry on her work. I am aware of the value of my biographical work regarding Terry Burns. I am also aware that any artist is liable to scrutiny regarding their private life as the world of art meets that of the public figure. It did not use to be that way. Artists did not seek publicity and were judged on their work. Not subjected to character assassination. I have written about my experiences in my book ’The Road to the Asylum’. I had no intention of drawing any conclusions when I confronted the issues I wrote about but after reading back what I wrote I was able to gain insight into what I had written.

 

MIND staff may have spread rumours in Swanley, and there’s not much you can do about rumours. I saw Graham White outside the house once, perhaps he was spreading rumours as well, I saw Amy Tebbutt a while later down the road, I passed her when I was on the bus, she said I’ve got to go there’s someone I don’t want to see. I saw her in ASDA a couple of times but I don’t know if they really kept my share of a lottery win I only have someone else’s word about that, though now I can remember Robert, a Stone House patient laughing about a Bob Marley song that refers to a sweepstake winner, and finding it disproportionately amusing around that time, all circumstantial.

It’s nearly ten years since Liz died and I can’t help thinking that if I did not have to cope with the harassment the rumours brought, I could have saved Liz at least for a while, like I saved Terry Burns for a while when I talked him out of committing suicide.

I told the head of MIND staff that I do not want to work with them too many undermining comments. I went to Cornwall for a few days rest from the situation, and after nearly a week away forgot about these problems, passing the time by posting comments on the Guardian web site using the comment is free facility, discussing some controversial art.

On the train back I realised the problems would still be there and some anxiety crept back. At Paddington I was pulling the rucksack I had tied to the suit case on wheels while carrying a shoulder bag, when I saw Ray, who I wrote about in my book ‘The Road to the Asylum’, and though I managed to walk past him without having to stop and talk, I blanked him I suppose, the bad memories came flooding back.

There was the fellow who ruined the Burnt Ash Hill squat by brining amphetamine when the one thing I asked him to do was not use the stuff there. His speed freak antics brought him into contact with a drug related murderer who visited commune and later, around the corner in a flat, murdered his girlfriend. What was supposed to be an arts commune was reduced to a very seedy drug den. Amphetamine use had always been frowned upon by the hippies in the Burnt Ash Hill squats and previously users were asked to leave. But Ray’s friend Steve followed him and I was outnumbered. Then when I went back to my parents Ray went back to his, and then followed me to Croydon Art School where he was again disruptive and anti-social. Ray moved into my room and I was homeless unable to stay at college.

Terry Burns once saw the Devil appear before him in what has been described as a schizophrenic vision. I would have rather seen the Devil walking up the platform at Paddington station, than Ray.

 

 

I had actually looked him up on the net, when researching my book. He had done well for himself, and was working in a therapeutic community with mal adjusted teenagers. Then he moved on and some bureaucratic job in the NHS. He had recently retired and is on the board of another mental health charity. A few years ago I noticed his picture in an Art Centre brochure. He was playing on acoustic guitar night, ’no electric guitars please’, it read.

 I have phoned ASDA and complained more than once but though they have been sympathetic, the situation did not change. So I phoned the head office, and spoke to a woman called Chantelle who again was sympathetic. She asked me to name the abusive staff and asked if they did not wear name badges, and I replied they did not. Chantelle told me she would get in touch with Swanley ASDA and ask the supervisor to have a word with the staff and to make sure that in future they wore their badges. Within a couple of days the staff were wearing name badges, and some walked away from me so I could not read their names. Some also wrote their names in small letters so it was more difficult to read them. They only wrote their first names, which is understandable. However I did go up to some of the staff that had been abusive over the years. I now no the big bully woman who usually works on the automatic tills near the tobacco counter is called Chris. A little supervisor who once was actually in crocodile tears at the prospect of having to deal with ‘that poof’ as a customer, is called Sue. Another woman with butterscotch coloured hair who also works on the automatic tills is called Natalie. Another thing the staff do is give the limp wrist sign behind my back and Natalie has done this more than once besides calling me a poof. The main offenders among the male staff are a tall skinhead who works collecting the trolleys and hand baskets. He is called Dave and has said ‘look there’s that poof’ a few times as had the tall fellow who is always working in the bread aisle in the mornings, he also called me a ‘nutter‘. A woman who works on customer services with longish dark hair has been abusive. I have had the same trouble with the night workers who stack the shelves near the tills and from a security guard. I have taken their names as advised by ASDA head office but have yet to send them my report.

A tall slim woman with long dark hair was re-stocking an isle near the automatic tills and said ‘there’s that poof’ to a shorter blonde hair woman who wears gold jewelry. The blonde woman started to shout and a paternal looking older man emerged from aisles further down the shop. I paid for my shopping and walked out. Then a few days another older man said the same insult to a shorter stocky man who collects the trolleys in the car park. The shorter fellow made a dart throwing gesture as if to say ‘bullseye’.

Seeing Ray brought back bad memories. Ray introduced me to a fellow many years ago when I was still a teenager.

John was the local LSD connection. LSD were few and far between and when under the influence of the drug, vulnerable. They needed a safe environment to take the drug which John provided in his small bedroom at the front of his father’s anonymous council house in St Mary’s Cray.

An upmarket ‘Bush’ Dansette type record player with the additional speaker and a collection of LP’s chosen for their psychedelic covers and content provided the soundtrack to the trips his customers took. John must have had quite a good supplier because at point he had an uncut block of ‘microdot’ LSD. He would cut off enough for a trip with a one sided razor blade. ‘Oh that’s too much, I’d better cut a bit off that’, or that’s not enough, I’d better give you a bit more’. Most of the time he was good natured and patient with his customers who he considered friends. A handwritten legend on the wall read    ‘In kind hands I am a diamond, in cruel hands I am dirt’.

Even though John was Ray’s LSD connection, they did not get on that well. Ray may have resented the control that John had over him as his supplier. At his home Ray liked to be ‘Captain Trips’ and John was the same at his house, so when they tripped together Ray said ‘never again’. According to Ray, John was a nice guy but he talked rubbish. It is true that John would end the frequent silences during a trip with hippie inanities like ‘we need to care more’ or ‘how can people hate’ but he was not the kind of person to mess with people’s heads to give them a bad trip. He was a considerate host who generously supplied joints and tea for his customers. He treated them like guests, and would often say don’t worry about it when anyone offered the fifty pence or one pound going rate for a trip. E sold some cannabis, he once had some hash oil, other times black cannabis, which he obtained from his acid dealer. So I suppose, small scale as their transactions were, they were rival dealers.

When John visited Ray and his girlfriend would refuse to answer the door, hiding from view if they were near a window.

John wrote down his LSD inspired thoughts and wrote to German ‘Krautrock’ band Yatha Sidra and they replied. They visited him at his father’s house and his acid poetry was set to music by the obscure German musicians. He turned up one day in a blue suit and with a haircut and proudly played me a cassette made by the Fichter brothers. It sounded a bit like a ‘Children of God’ recording but I only got the opportunity to hear it the once. The Fichter brothers went on to form ‘Dreamworld’ a name I had told John I had intended to call my own band should I find anyone to join, as the band Ray and I had tried to form was going nowhere. I think John had suggested the name as his own idea and I had no problem with that. By that time John had moved into the houses converted into bedsits at St Paul’s Cray. Ray did not like John moving in, but there was nothing he could do about it. By then John’s girlfriend had left him and run off with his supplier and John had stated using amphetamine sulphate. His new girlfriend Moira became psychotic after being given LSD and was in the local psychiatric unit. John would go on to join her there. Love turned to hate when amphetamine abuse increased, accompanied by the advent of Punk rock. I wandered away from the house, and eventually took the last train of the night from King’s Cross to Northampton.

I got off at the stop before my destination and walked along the road. I arrived at the town before at dawn before the paper shops were open. Paper shops are the first to open then bakers. After wandering around the town I bought something to eat from the bakers. I went to the shopping centre and outside the public lavatories I was searched by plainclothes policemen. ‘Look at his arms’ one of them said, looking for needle marks. There were none, so they let me go, and went to a café to buy a cup of tea. A nurse saw me and gave me a pound. Somehow I forget who told me I found out that I could get a bed at a hostel opposite the Racetrack, a park. I had to go to the social security office and arrange for them to pay for rent and the two meals a day that the hostel provided. By the time I reached the hostel it was gone five in the evening and the social security was closed so the night warden let me sit in the office while he slept in his chair. I fell asleep on the floor and woke early, and left for the town centre, to sign on. I mentioned that I had been in psychiatric hospital and wanted to stay at the hostel and that, and the fact that I was quite disturbed, due to lack of sleep and anxiety helped hurry my case and I was told to come back at the end of the day when the counter payments were paid out. This I did and reported back to the hostel where I was given a bed in a downstairs front room which had been converted to a bedroom with five beds and a wardrobe.  

Ray showed me the sights of Northampton the tourists never see. He took me to St Crispin’s psychiatric hospital to collect his medication which he said he had to take to the practice nurse at his local surgery. St Crispins was to the west of the town centre, St Andrew’s asylum to the north east. St Andrew’s was where John Clare was a patient and later in the 1950’s Jane Bowles was treated after she had a stroke. Instead of going straight back to the hostel Roy took me to the local Convent where the nun’s provided a midday meal for homeless men.

There was an artist in the hostel. He told me that his wife had not only thrown him out but thrown painting he had spent two years working on into the street. A car had run it over ruining it beyond repair. He was abusing a solvent called Zof. He said he only used it occasionally. There was a young couple, Kathy and Pat, the rooms were segregated, and Pat was quiet and thin while Kathy was as cheerful as anyone could be in an overcrowded homeless hostel. Most of the other residents were quite older homeless men who kept their heads down. There were two meals a day, breakfast and an evening meal, like most hostels residents were expected to be off the premises by nine o clock in the morning and not return until four in the afternoon. At weekends there was an extra meal on Sunday, a dinner. Hot meals were preheated in tin containers like those from a Chinese takeaway and were eaten in silence. The hostel took most of the resident’s social security money leaving the residents with a few pounds pocket money.

I scrimped and saved my train fare back to London. I wandered around Soho all night and I don’t remember where, but I was stopped by the police who said I had an outstanding court case that I was not aware of which was a very minor criminal damage charge. I had broken a small window by my parents’ back door when I went back to see if I had anything left when they put all my possessions, what there was of them, on the front door step. My parents must have called the police and pressed charges. In those days if you could put someone’s property outside the house and lock them out you could evict them. They have changed that law since. I was taken to the police station, then to Brixton as I was of no fixed abode, despite the triviality of the crime. I was held there on remand for a week then Dr Ghali from Farnborough said he was transferring me to Oakwood asylum, near Maidstone in Kent.

I have written about Oakwood before, but did not mention that Ray’s friend Steve later told me that he went to school with Carlos.

From Oakwood I was transferred to Farnborough and from Farnborough to Rydal Mount, in Beckenham, a hostel that was much more pleasant than the hostel in Northampton, but still overcrowded and with similar rules and financial arrangements. All the residents suffered from long term mental illness, and were a lot less intimidating than the residents in Northampton.

Later, in the 1980’s I would be in and out of Farnborough, and met a couple of the Bromley speed freaks that I did not know in the seventies, Clifford, a pianist, and Paul Wells, a fellow with a cockney accent and a sheepskin coat who took me to the Odd Spot café in Bromley North, a haunt of the old speeders. Speedy John used to frequent the premises. Not all speed freaks were aggressive, but they tended to have unrealistic expectations and make unrealistic plans which became more impractical as the amphetamine wore off.

There was Punk poet who was on the admission ward for a while who had a collection of punk rock cassettes many of whom were political and unknown outside their own circle.

 

 

                           Elizabeth  Brown    1975- 2005