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Posted Monday 11 January 2010
A guest post by Zarathustra of the Mental Nurse blog.
It's not always easy for mental health professionals and patients to have an open and honest conversation with each other. In my own field, mental health nursing, we're often at the sharp end of the more coercive aspects of psychiatry - compulsory detention, restraint, rapid tranquilisation and so on. Such things may at times be an unpleasant necessity, but they inevitably put up barriers between staff and patient. Even in settings where there's no coercion at all - say, a CPN meeting with a patient on a community visit - there's still the structure of professional and patient, with all that entails in terms of boundaries, power hierarchies and so on.
So, where can all those involved in mental health meet as true equals to exchange banter, stories and the odd uncomfortable truth? I'd say one answer lies in blogging.
On my blog, Mental Nurse, we're keen to recognise the power of blogging as a way for people involved in mental health to tell their stories and debate with each other. That's why we host a weekly
round-up of the best in mental health blogs. On New Year's Day we hosted our own awards ceremony, recognising some of the writing talent that has impressed us and our readership over the past year.
Among the mental health blogs, one of the most popular is Seaneen Molloy's Mentally Interesting: The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive, recently adapted into an award-winning Radio 4 play Dos and Don'ts for the Mentally Interesting. Blogs like Seaneen's give the human story behind what it's like to live with a mental illness. Not just the experience of the mental illness itself (say, the experience of depression, or a mixed episode), but all the associated hassles and problems as well - the tussles with the benefits system, the side-effects of psychiatric medication, and so on.
Sometimes these blogs give stark illustrations of the failings of mental health services. Mad Sad Girl's description of her time on an acute ward makes for grim reading, showing how frightening it can be to be admitted to such wards, and how physical healthcare for patients can be sorely lacking
For those looking for accounts of specific conditions, I can recommend Marine Snow and Obsessively Compulsively Yours for first-person depictions of anorexia nervosa and obsessive-compulsive disorder respectively. Borderline personality disorder is particularly well-represented in the blogosphere; Genius Gone Wrong, Becoming Hannah, Writing in the Margins of My Mind and Confessions of a Serial Insomniac all give insightful chronicles of living with that most-unfairly maligned of conditions.
As well as patients, there are a number of good quality blogs written by professionals. I can recommend Fighting Monsters and The Masked AMHP, both written by social workers, as well as Frontier Psychiatrist.
There's also some blog written by a bunch of mental health nurses, but I wouldn't bother with that one.
There's a third set of stories to add into the mix, and that's of carers. Schizophrenia - A Carer's Journal relates the fears and frustrations of a father with a son in a forensic secure unit. The Wife of a Schizophrenic is sadly currently inactive, but her back catalogue of posts is still worth reading.
The posts and comments threads of blogs provide one of those very few places where mental health professionals, patients and carers can engage with each other on a genuinely level playing field. I think that's an opportunity we should take. If you're new to the blogosphere, then the above recommendations are a good place to start.
And if you don't like any of these blogs, then why not start your own?
Zarathustra, Mental Nurse
8 Comments
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Great post Z! Nice to see some great blogs recognised in such a public setting. I hope it highlights the importance of mental health blogging to more people in the field, especially professionals who can be a little skeptical at times.
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Thanks ever so much for the mention here, Z, and indeed for the article in general. One thing I would have found helpful when I first started to experience real mental health difficulties was the words of others who'd been there - I hope that the blogs of others can help some people in this position now.
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Blogging can be just like writing a diary for me sometimes - with the difference that I have some lovely people who read it who either can empathise or pull me back down to reality and take a real look at what i've actually typed!
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Thanks Z for the mention! I love writing Genius Gone Wrong, it’s therapeutic and shows what it is like to live with something like Borderline Personality Disorder!
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As ever Z, thank you for the mention. Blogging means the world to me, and the wealth of support it provides is simply not quantifiable. It means being understood, and that is sometimes all it takes.
Lola x
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How on earth a psychiatric nurse has the nerve to recommend reading for us, their victims, is beyond me and why is Mind printing this stuff? I think we are quite capable of deciding where to blog and this is just part of the patronising aspect of stigma to give space to your suggestions.
It is us, not you Zarathustra, who are on the 'sharp end' of your cruel behaviour. These unpleasant necessities as you call them are rarely necessary and most of you enjoy the power and humiliation.
There can be no equality between mental health staff and their victims for the threat of losing our freedom and of being drugged is always present.
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Hi Fiona
In response to your comments:
1. In my current job - a CPN in child and adolescent mental health services - the overwhelming majority of my patients see me entirely voluntarily. I don't do restraint or rapid tranquilisation in my current post. The most coercive thing I do at the moment is supervising mealtimes with anorexic teenagers - basically making sure they eat their meals so they don't starve to death.
2. "These unpleasant necessities as you call them are rarely necessary" Since qualifying two years ago and working in various settings (either as regular staff or on the nurse bank), I can still count on my hands the number of times I've restrained someone, and I've used rapid tranquilisation precisely once. On nearly every occasion this involved people who were attempting to inflict violence on either a member of staff or another patient - in some cases with weapons. One exception to this was a severely brain-damaged man who had lost all understanding that he required insulin injections for his Type 1 diabetes. Therefore it was unfortunately necessary to restrain him in order to give him the treatment that was keeping him alive.
Of these (happily rare) occasions when I've had to use restraint or rapid tranquilisation, I'm confident that I was able to justify the need to do so in order to make a situation safe, and that there was no other way at that time.
3. "most of you enjoy the power and humiliation." I can't speak for all nurses everywhere, but for myself and the vast majority of my colleagues, this is absolutely untrue. I have no desire to restrain or rapid-tranquilise anyone, and have gone to great lengths on multiple occasions to avoid having to do so.
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Hi regarding poor practise in mental helath CIty and Hackney MIND's service user videos are worth seeing.
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