LIVING UNDER SECTION 3 OF THE MENTAL HEALTH ACT – MY CURRENT REALITY

“One must still have chaos in one­self to give birth to a dan­cing star” (Niet­zche)

I’m tired. So very tired. Let me take you back to last night. It’s 3am and I am lying in bed. But I am also wide awake. My neigh­bour is scream­ing and kick­ing my door viol­ently. I don’t know if they will get in. But I am hyper-vigil­ant. I am scared. I feel alone. Back to the morn­ing and it’s my first full day in a Cygnet hos­pit­al, this time a rehab hos­pit­al for men­tal health. I’ve been trans­ferred from an acute ward in anoth­er hos­pit­al after six months there. Pri­or to that I was in an East Lon­don hos­pit­al for four months because my bor­ough had no beds. I am now close to hav­ing been in a hos­pit­al set­ting for nearly two years. That weighs heav­ily on my con­scious mind. For almost two years I have not walked down the street on my own. I have not been to a shop on my own. I have not seen my friends. Arriv­ing at cygnet, it’s that same famil­i­ar daunt­ing feel­ing to have to start again. New faces, new struc­ture, new rules. I know no one.

As I sit on my bed, writ­ing this, 12 months have passed. I am still in hos­pit­al. So much has changed. So much has not. I am still here under sec­tion 3 of the Men­tal health Act. What that means is that I can be held against my will and be for­cibly giv­en treat­ment if need be. This sec­tion has been renewed 3 times. That means that while I am here I have been through every sea­son in the past year: winter, spring, sum­mer, autumn. For the most part, the out­er world, the weath­er, nature, and people going about their lives, have been seen through a win­dow. Today the weath­er is boil­ing, but to me it is a fur­nace. The win­dows in my room do not open, except for one which opens a fraction.

It is men­tal health aware­ness week. What bet­ter time to share my per­spect­ive, when I am cur­rently on sec­tion in hos­pit­al to treat my men­tal health. This is my real­ity, my story, and mine alone. There is sad­ness, there is hurt, there are bless­ings, some things cursed. This is raw­ness, this is my truth, but along with the pain, the hos­pit­al has also giv­en me gifts, and these go unmen­tioned much of the time, due to the stress of my free­dom being so cur­tailed. The coun­try is on lock down. Well I have spent the past year in a lock down of sorts.

I still wake up won­der­ing where I am, because I have been in so many hos­pit­als, and I still wake up won­der­ing just how I got here, into a long term rehab hos­pit­al. The day I received my sec­tion 2, after wak­ing up in a med­ic­al hos­pit­al fol­low­ing a large over­dose, the con­sult­ant on the acute ward who has known me for years, said “Kate, you have had so many admis­sions that this time I’m think­ing you need rehab”. The idea of rehab is that you learn to cut down the fre­quency of your men­tal health epis­odes. But my fel­low peers, and myself, nev­er real­ised what a dif­fi­cult admis­sion it would be. It is so hard to live here in a stand alone women’s ward, in a big house. There may be 14 oth­ers here. But I still feel so lonely.

Before I came here I had under­gone a ter­rible epis­ode of psy­chos­is in Edg­ware hos­pit­al, my usu­al acute ward. I thought I was tramp­ling on the dead bod­ies of snakes and mice wherever I walked, I thought I had been brought in at gun­point and ordered to kill my mum’s dog. I thought the staff were attack­ing me and stop­ping me from going to the toi­let so I urin­ated in bins. I drank sham­poo because I thought it was my meth­adone. I thought my phone was bugged so I put it in the wash­ing machine. It came out dead but very clean.

The most ser­i­ous issue though was that I planned my sui­cide, and I did not want my mum to be dis­tressed so I plot­ted to murder her. Most of these things, among oth­ers, I barely remem­ber, I was told what I had done. I was act­ing so bizar­rely that I had an emer­gency CT scan incase my beha­viour was organ­ic and I had a bleed on the brain. Slowly, I recovered and was sent to rehab in cygnet. My 15 hos­pit­al admis­sions over the years had taken its toll, stolen my life, and it was last chance saloon. In Newham, pri­or to Edg­ware, I was in an extreme man­ic state. I thought I was from Texas, and had moved to LA and had become a celebrity. I spoke in a Tex­an accent for 6 months. Appar­ently every­one was deeply irrit­ated but me. I was so high I thought I could fly.

I have rap­id cyc­ling bipolar, along with oth­er labels and that means I have extreme ups and extreme downs. I have had every med­ic­a­tion avail­able, along with the side effects such as weight gain. That is dev­ast­at­ing for a young per­son and their self esteem. I have even had ECT (Elec­tro con­vul­sion Ther­apy). That required two gen­er­al anes­thet­ics a week, with elec­trodes on your head, and a con­vul­sion stim­u­lated while you are uncon­scious. Trau­mat­ic. But it worked for my unmov­able depression.

So back to now. May 2020, Cygnet Kenton. I sobbed every day for months when I arrived because I hated it so much. I con­nec­ted with nobody for some time. The sense of sep­ar­a­tion was pro­found. Speak­ing today, I have found friends, some here, some gone. I’ve learnt that hav­ing good fel­low patients is the key to a hav­ing a more ful­filling stay. I have seen people of every extreme, every ill­ness, and moreover, I have met incred­ible human beings. I have seen people at their best, people at their worst. Primar­ily, I have seen people – not labels, just human beings

That applies to the staff too. I hated their abrupt­ness, what seemed to be rude­ness, less than com­fort­ing beha­viour. Now I have come to see just how hard they have to work. How they may be intern­ally exper­i­en­cing what we are. We all suf­fer at points of our lives. The staff are not the total sep­ar­ate entit­ies I believed them to be. Some of them have gone out of their way to help me, and I will always be grate­ful for that.

On my jour­ney of numer­ous hos­pit­al I have met such char­ac­ters. I have met some of the most intel­li­gent, cre­at­ive, sens­it­ive people. I have seen and felt so much pain and so much beauty, so many gifts and so many curses, so many bless­ings and such hurt. I’ve seen joy, I’ve seen sor­row, I’ve seen tragedy. I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve lost people, and I’ve gained friends. And while I’ve seen sui­cide and death, I’ve seen hope. Only a glim­mer some­times. But non­ethe­less, that is enough to keep going. Hope.

That hope had left me for a time, and in the last few years I took 3 delib­er­ate over­doses. This admis­sion shames me, but where I stand today I believe, for myself, that raw hon­esty helps dimin­ish that shame. It also helps oth­ers in the same place who can­not speak up. I’ve injec­ted heroin, smoked crack, all for self med­ic­a­tion, not for fun or soci­ab­il­ity. In cygnet hos­pit­al I’ve come off meth­adone and that I have to feel proud of. I’ve been high, I’ve been low, I’m on a lot of med­ic­a­tion but I’m work­ing towards sta­bil­ity. More than any­thing I just want peace. Not the grand things in life. Just inner peace. Some­times I feel like I have lost everything. I have no stable rela­tion­ship, no chil­dren, no job or career, liv­ing on bene­fits with little money. This ill­ness has ruined my life. But I have also gained. I can now paint again, I’m writ­ing again after years of a debil­it­at­ing tremor in my hands. I am grate­ful for this. I believe that I have been giv­en gifts and seen things in life that oth­ers haven’t and it has giv­en me a big heart and wis­dom. I’m not sure I would turn the clock back on all of it.

I have tried to run away from cygnet a few times because I couldn’t bear it here earli­er in my stay. I was so low. But it didn’t help, I just got pain­fully restrained and had my leave to go out sus­pen­ded. I don’t hate it here any­more. Its the sys­tem I hate. The staff tend to give only the best, but the bur­eau­cracy is aston­ish­ing. There are not enough work­ers. Some, like any­where, I find dif­fi­cult to work with. But the vast major­ity are angels.

In hos­pit­al there are moments of beauty, flashes of love. Moments that move my soul, a hug, or a hello from someone who nev­er speaks. People you see who go from dis­tress you can­not hide, anim­al­ist­ic cries, to the joy when they rise. Some don’t. I see the scars, lit­er­al and intern­al. They hurt my heart, but they are beau­ti­ful. They tell a story, a hard life lived, a his­tory, they are only part of a per­son. Do not be ashamed.

The theme of men­tal health aware­ness week is Kind­ness. The defin­i­tion of kind­ness is, :”the qual­ity of being friendly, gen­er­ous, and considerate”.

So be kind. The per­son stand­ing in front of you has their own story, their own issues, their own jour­neys. You don’t know what they are going through. Small ges­tures go a long way. A greet­ing, a good morn­ing, may mean a lot to someone who is suf­fer­ing. Indeed to every­one. So once again, Be kind.

“A single act of kind­ness throws out roots in all dir­ec­tions, and the roots spring up and make new trees” (Amelia Earhart)