Mental health from both sides
My mind is souredLike pickles caught in teethLingering past the tasteAnd spreading doubt.I hate the cloak I wearOf clinging knowledgeI hate the doubts I feelAnd they are me and youAnd you.No longer do I taste of milkFresh and sweet and pureMy thoughts are long fermented.I will never know quite whereBut the road to deathIs paved…
So many moments make up a life. Some are forgotten almost instantly, some fade with time, and some are written hard on memory. Some of these are happy, some painful and humiliating. Do we really remember them, or do they curl into something else, worn by memory itself? Do we talk about them, look at…
My second child was due to be born when my daughter was four years old. Psychotic depression, before and after her birth had meant that we thought we would not have another, and it was a joy to think that we might have a different experience. I had been on lithium when the baby was conceived,…
A poem warning of the dangers of ancestry testing & the consequent risk of ill-founded doubt (with thanks to Sylvia Plath) Daddy give me a break Won't you? Daddy what will it take For you To see That I am a part of you? What do you see when you see me Daddy? Is there…
Soundless you ceased to be, Oh my daughter. Unliving A shell of a life A sigh with no start. Is it better To live, twenty years and more, To long and to yearn, To lose the distance That will never come? Or did the pulling darkness, The lack of time, Beguile you more? I never…
Privilege is a word that is uppermost in many minds at present. It drips off the tongue, coated in caviar, champagne and cocaine, and no-one can really decide whether they want it or not. Does it help? Does it condemn? I consider myself privileged and feel guilty for being so. I’m not privileged enough to…
When I call myself a patient and a doctor, they seem like two opposites, two sides of the same table. In mental illness they are often perceived very differently – one with knowledge and power, one suffering and in need of help. They don’t join together well. They make a whole with an empty centre,…
I think I have always experienced anxiety. Not all the time, in that I’m not always anxious, but it has always lurked in the background, waiting to spoil things. I don’t know how much anxiety is normal though, and perhaps mine is a sensible and healthy amount. No anxiety at all would be quite a…
Psychiatry and psychiatrist are powerful words. They stop conversations, and create awkward gaps. I try not to say I am a psychiatrist in social settings, sometimes muttering something about being a doctor, and usually wriggling out of anything further. Conversely, in a clinical setting, I always tell patients that I am a psychiatrist, probably because…
This is a question frequently asked, and unsatisfactorily answered. I don’t know the answers, and I won’t pretend to, but I find it quite a difficult dichotomy – along with many others in the field of mental illness. I once worked for a psychiatrist, years ago, who took the trouble to reassure me that he…
We all have a personality, but, when you move into the realms of psychiatry and mental health, this term can take on a rather different meaning. It is often also very difficult to discuss, something which is hardly surprising, given the fact that personality disorder can be seen as a punitive diagnosis, one of exclusion…
How did I make that leap from them to us, or us to them? I was a patient, a not very active patient, but I had become part of that community. It was better than being part of nothing, and I was no longer working as a doctor, with no obvious prospect of returning. My…
My brain has been somewhat exercised of late, both by my own internal wrangles about psychiatric treatments and by various online debates, particularly about ECT. These debates often seem to be moral and emotional in nature, making it particularly hard to contribute or indeed come to any conclusions. I am someone with a very precarious…
I used to think that being present in any particular situation ensured accuracy. By this I mean accuracy of observation and also of recall; that standing witness to events was always reliable. As a child, I thought of the years as a climbing staircase, with different events, schools and holidays marking out the way. In…
I have been a psychiatric in-patient on quite a few occasions. I am also the psychiatrist on an in-patient ward. There are differences: I work with people with addictions, whereas my times as a patient have been on general psychiatric wards with severe depression. But there are also similarities, and most of my admissions were…