by Jean Davison
Five wasted years. Years when I should have been living and learning and growing up. And what about others whose five years turns into fifty, sixty or seventy years, the ones who never make it back? How many of those are victims not of ‘mental illness’ but of psychiatry? We, who have survived the system intact enough to live and grow and write books about our experiences, are the lucky ones.
But what about the silenced? What about their stories?
AFTERWORD
‘Doctors pour drugs of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, into human beings of whom they know nothing.’
Voltaire
A LONG TIME HAS passed since Voltaire wrote that in the eighteenth century. A long time, too, has passed since the spring of 1974 when I swallowed my last psychiatric drug and ‘FINISHED MY CONNECTIONS’. High Royds has been closed, along with the other large Victorian-built mental institutions. Does this reflect a radical change in attitudes, or is the ‘change’ only from one setting to another?
A lot is said, and written, about psychiatry by professional experts, but there is a crying need for more recipients and survivors of the psychiatric system to be heard. Although the User/Survivor movement, and others aware of the need for change, have brought about significant improvements in the past decade, there is still far to go. It is as imperative as ever to address the questions raised in this book, and for more of us to speak out about our experiences.
The most frightening thing about what happened to me is that most of it could still happen to a young person, or indeed anyone, today. I was a casualty of the narrow medical perspective of conventional psychiatry. With almost no knowledge of me or the context of my life, psychiatrists swiftly began treatment for what their training told them was an illness requiring brain-changing drugs and ECT. Over thirty years later, how has psychiatry changed? Psychiatry has arguably become even more biologically focused. An increasing number of people experiencing misery due to relationships, employment, housing and other problems connected to life events are prescribed drugs such as Prozac to treat a perceived abnormality of brain neurotransmitters. ECT is still widely used.
I am not saying a medical framework of mental distress is always destructive as I do appreciate that some people find medication, and an understanding of their problems in terms of a diagnosis, helpful. But I, and many others, have learnt to our cost how limiting and damaging it can be to frame our experiences as symptoms of illness requiring physical treatments.
I read my case notes recently and have incorporated extracts from them into this book. What am I to make of these records? The diagnosis of schizophrenia was a complete surprise to me. I never had the so-called ‘classic symptom’ of hearing voices, nor did I experience psychotic delusions, a loosening of my grip on ‘reality’. But a diagnosis of ‘schizophrenia (simplex)’ was, and still is, based on what are called ‘negative symptoms of schizophrenia’, such as social withdrawal, lethargy, blunted emotions. Ah, well … add to these ‘symptoms’ those words of a mixed-up teenager: ‘I do not know what I am’ and ‘I am confused with so many different ideas’ including the religious ideas about ‘heaven and hell’, and there we have the evidence of ‘thought disorder of bizarre in[sic] nature’ – which all adds up to schizophrenia. Really?
How quickly, how easily, and on what flimsy ‘evidence’ diagnostic labels may be affixed and lives torn apart. Yet the serious flaws in the diagnostic process are still seemingly unacknowledged by those with unswerving belief in its scientific validity.
Today, as when I was a patient, the implications of being given such a diagnosis as schizophrenia can be extremely grave in terms of treatment decisions, employment prospects, self-concept, beliefs and attitudes of others towards the diagnosed person, stigmatisation, disempowerment, social isolation and misery; all in addition to whatever psychosocial problems there may have already been. Little wonder the prognosis for ‘chronic schizophrenics’ tends to be dismal (whether or not the diagnosis is correct).
So what about the problems which prompted me to seek psychiatric help in the first place? What about my shyness, family troubles, dissatisfaction with life, all that conflict and confusion about religion and the struggles to come to terms with the loss of my Christian faith? Whether psychiatric problems or ‘growing pains’, they were, of course, still there for me to deal with when I left the hospital and stopped taking drugs.
The shyness which caused a lot of sadness and misunderstanding didn’t go away but it lessened. I made new friends, and I am still in touch with my ‘old’ close friends: Jackie, Mandy and Vivian.
Living away from my parents, I didn’t feel a need to cut off all contact with them as my brother did. I am sure my parents (both dead now) loved me and they would not have knowingly done anything to harm me.
I left Ravens to work in the office of a social-work agency, while also doing voluntary work helping (I hope), mainly by empathic listening, those who were as unhappy and confused as I had once been. I then went on to study for a BA (Hons) degree in Combined Studies (mainly Literature and Psychology), slowly gaining the confidence to speak out in class discussions, and some of the positive relationships I formed with other mature students developed into strong friendships that endure today.
I still sometimes fear that ECT and psychiatric drugs damaged my brain, but at least some parts of it seem to be functioning well: I graduated with a First Class Honours degree.
My views on religion have not basically changed since I questioned, and lost, my beliefs in my teens. It would be pleasant to believe that we are watched over by a wise, caring God who will one day reveal to us what we cannot now understand, as in this poem:
Not ’til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly,
Will God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why
The dark threads are as needful
In The Weaver’s skilful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.
As a teenager I wanted badly to find a meaning, a purpose, a pattern, a God. To think as I started doing then, that there might be none of these things, was hard for me to take. Over the years I have learnt to live with ambiguities, uncertainty, the possibility of never knowing. But it seems that ‘something’ of my leanings towards spirituality never left me. Not completely. Words I read long ago from the poem above, written by Benjamin Malachi Franklin, have stayed in my mind, perhaps still inspiring me to search for the Divine Weaver who will one day explain the dark threads.
Writing this book has made me reflect upon what might have been, following on from what used to be: my dad stalking the town with a knife, my mum sleeping rough on some waste ground, my brother ‘off his head’ in ‘every which way’, and me written off as suffering from chronic schizophrenia. Bless this mess! And ‘there but for fortune’ I could have ended up a life-long psychiatric patient, emotionally crippled and a victim of tardive dyskinesia. Instead, my life became amazingly ‘normal’ and happy. Leaving home, finishing with psychiatry and getting off the drugs are not the answers for everyone but certainly enabled me to turn a depressing (untold) story into a story of triumph.
I began writing this book many years ago in my little room at the YWCA, sitting on my bed with my old, battered portable typewriter balanced on my knees. I continued it in my cold, draughty bed-sit and am finishing it on a PC in the warm, comfortable house where I live today with Ian, the man I love more than words can say. Memories and perceptions of past events are inevitably fallible but I have worked hard to recreate my experiences with scrupulous honesty, telling truths as I perceive them.
My work time is currently divided between writing, studying and working in mental health for an organisation affiliated to Mind. Years pass by much more quickly than they used to, so it seems I’ll never find enough time to do all the things I want to do. How very different is my life now from existence in the bleak mental hospital world where
time hung so heavily.
As I bring this book to a close, I am thinking about the patients I knew, wondering how many of them are still suffering. And I am remembering how one of them, Georgina, hugged me in tears on the day I left the hospital, saying that I would go away and forget all about them.
It’s true that during the ups and downs of everyday living, memories of the hospital world and the sad plight of patients often recede. How could it be otherwise? I am awake and alive, and I’ve a wonderful husband with whom to share the joys and sorrows of living. So many things to do, places to go, people to meet, and always more new experiences, new things to learn; oh, still so much living to catch up on.
But, no, Georgina, I won’t forget. I promise I’ll never forget.
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