A NOT SO PERFECT DAY.

MENTAL HEALTH OFFICER TRAINING

EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY

JANUARY 2025

A NOT SO PERFECT DAY.

I went for a walk round Ardmore today, with Wendy and Dash the dog. Wendy was bitterly regretting the end of the holidays and a return to work and in order to cope with it was behaving in wonderfully bizarre ways. It made me smile a lot though I think she sometimes exaggerates her lack of knowledge of nature to produce those smiles in me; especially when she mistook cormorants for herons and ducks for oyster catchers!

We both had our hats and gloves on but didn’t need them that much as the air had heated enough to cause the frost to thaw and the ice to melt. I like that walk very much. There is something special when we amble and Wendy talks away and doesn’t get too bothered by my silence though if I could speak more I would be delighted but it is rare that I have thoughts in my head to report on.

At home, while Wendy settled back to her lap top and work, I tidied the kitchen and emptied the dishwasher. I was just about to heat up the soup for lunch, when someone knocked at the door.

Standing on the doorstep was a fairly old man smiling at me. He introduced himself and told me he was a mental health officer, which reminded me why I had been fairly sure I knew him. I knew him from my last meeting with my psychiatrist.

I realised that I was being impolite when we began to look at each other awkwardly and, remembering my manners, I invited him in.

I would have quite liked to have asked him why he was here to see me but felt awkward about asking so I left it to him to speak to us. It was an uneasy half hour and it was only in the last five minutes that I was able to ask him why he had come to see us which, as I had guessed, turned out to be a second go at deciding if I still need to be compulsorily treated. He decided I did.

Wendy said he seemed really nice, and said I appeared to be undecided whether I approved of him or not. She was right. I did like him but didn’t really want him there. I liked his values and his opinions on services and his ability to keep a conversation going when I was not that talkative, well to say ‘not that talkative’ is an understatement!

I don’t know why I am so bad at talking to people like that; maybe because at home, we ignore this illness conversation stuff most of the time and just get on with life. I didn’t really want to talk about devils and evil and death and all these different, slightly humiliating, and certainly very private beliefs, with him and probably not in front of Wendy either.

I really struggle to see myself as having a mental illness but sometimes I catch myself unawares. The silence with which I populate my life must be incredibly frustrating to those that I love and later, when I could see myself on the zoom screen at the Jeans Bothy members meeting; all I could see was this man with hair all over the place staring straight ahead with the occasional uncertain grin. If ever you want to hire a schizophrenia stereotype I think I might occasionally be your man!!

When he left, he told me I could appeal the section and apologised because he knew I knew all that stuff. I wonder what would actually happen if I came off the section? I wonder what would happen if I did all I could to come off it; started lying about my intention to take medication, or tried to show all the things that are needed for them to think I could manage without them? I expect I could if I tried and was willing to tell those few lies. Sometimes I would so much love it if I never had to see one of these professionals again.

As I am now sixty and first went into hospital when I was nineteen or twenty it is a good four decades that they have been in my life. Most have been kind and decent people; not all of them, but most. But despite that I am so sick of talking to them. Sometimes I think I might scream if another nurse, I have only met once, asks me again if I have had any symptoms since I last saw her. Although I agree there are such things as symptoms I don’t personally think I have such things and don’t want to have to admit myself to their vision of me by admitting I have things that could be called symptoms.

Never ever to have to tell my story again, talk about how much I drink. Never to discuss my ability to work, smile blandly when they imply it is not real work that I do. To never worry that the injection will hurt or will have to be done twice because the needle has stuck in scar tissue. Never worry about how I can go away for longer than two weeks without having to arrange to get an appointment I am legally obliged to attend. Yes, that would be good I think.

Despite that I did enjoy my walk with Wendy today. I liked her silliness that was really grumpiness. She is so bad at grumping that she just gets weirder and weirder the more she complains and funnier and funnier. In fact I never realise she is being grumpy, until she tells me that what I think is charming is really a bad mood.

And am I in a bad mood now the MHO has been and gone and done his bit? Not really; I am so used to this now. Will I appeal? I very much hope I don’t. It would just upset me and take too much of my time and not make any difference anyway.

It is not a sign of good citizenship; refusing to attend my tribunal, which I assume will be held in a month or so’s time but to be honest that doesn’t bother me anymore. I am not so sure I want to be a good citizen anyway.

For many years I have been calling for connection and belonging to be at the heart of mental health care and for love to imbue the actions of mental health workers but just at the moment I don’t want to belong or fit in or be loved by any of them; just for now, I would like to be apart, different and not belong in their world at all.