“We’re all seen as people catching flies in their mouth and talking to Jesus while wearing tin helmets,” says Chris Dowling*, who is being treated for mental health problems that include depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Mental health needn’t be that debilitating, but even my own family … it’s almost as if they think it’s contagious. They steer clear of me,” he adds. “We have to shift the outdated Victorian connotations of what mental health is.”
Dowling is a patient at St Andrew’s Healthcare, a low-secure unit near Wickford, Essex. It’s for people who have been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, which deems they are in need of urgent treatment for a mental health disorder and are at risk of harm to themselves or others. The hospital he’s in requires people to enter and exit through an airlock; staff and visitors are required to wear a personal alarm and there’s a long list of restricted items, including mobile phones. Patients work up to being let out on day trips with a member of staff before gaining independent leave and ultimately, if suitable, being discharged back into the community. Some patients are there for a matter of weeks; others stay for years.
In 2017-18, there were around 50,000 detentions under the Mental Health Act, but a huge amount of mystery shrouds what psychiatric hospitals are like. With a lack of voices emerging from these hospitals, people have been left to picture a distorted version of reality, exacerbated by films such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Silence of the Lambs, or stories in the media about violent attacks.
But one mental health nurse is on a mission to change this perception by recording a podcast about life on a men’s ward, featuring both patient and staff voices. John-Barry Waldron is a recently qualified nurse who has worked at St Andrew’s Healthcare for more than 10 years (he was a support worker when he started). He admits: “As soon as I explain to people where I work, they get images of straitjackets and staff dressed all in white. It’s different to that.” The motivation behind the podcast was to get patients’ voices out there, he adds. “They’re not heard, they’re not seen. This [podcast] is to change that.”
The five-part podcast focuses on a different patient each episode, as well as members of staff who have had a close working relationship with that individual. One patient who features in the series is Adam, in his late 30s, who talks about his journey with paranoid schizophrenia. He says: “I was a nightmare when I first came here three years ago. I’d shower with my clothes on, take them off in public, piss everywhere. My recovery is a miracle, really.”
Adam is now allowed to go out unaccompanied every day, and he writes poetry, enjoys dancing and is part of a local church group in the community. He’s keen to show others that recovery is possible, which is why he’s shared his story. “I thought it might be helpful for people in the future, for those who think they won’t get better.”
Of course, the podcast doesn’t portray a perfect world. Waldron says that patients are sometimes here when they don’t want to be. One patient who talks about how football has helped with his recovery on an episode of the podcast says it’s “shit” being on the ward and that he can’t wait to get out. But in the same conversation he talks about all the friendships and happy memories he’s made.
With the podcast, Waldron also aims to show the reality of staff’s working lives at the hospital – an assistant psychologist, a gym instructor, a fellow nurse and others feature in the series.
He admits the job can be incredibly difficult. He says: “It’s not easy working in a place like this because patients are sometimes quite volatile. You have to deal with things that are tough. You might have patients who self-harm – they might cut their arms and attempt to tie things around their neck. That’s quite hard to see.” Patient violence and the effect on members of staff is also discussed – Waldron himself has been attacked two times.
But Dowling is just happy to be getting the help he craved for so long. It took one suicide attempt and admitting that he was preparing another to convince medical professionals to section him.
He finds it hard to comprehend the huge amount of stigma that surrounds mental health. “People are so misinformed about the good work going on,” he says. “It’s quite shocking in this day and age.”
* Names have been changed.
