“She remembered who she was, and
the game changed.”
Lalah Deliah
*YOU CAN READ PART ONE HERE & PART
TWO HERE*
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SOMETHING HUGE THAT I’VE BARELY BLOGGED
ABOUT
My mental health has been really poor these past few weeks or months, and so I’ve had to talk to a lot of professionals and there’s something we keep talking about and I was shocked to realise I actually haven’t said much about it on I’m NOT Disordered! There’s one post (which you can read here) that says the most about the fact that on February 18th 2023, I was sectioned under section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act.
I had been in
my local A&E and had to see their Psychiatric Liaison Team (PLT) who then
told me to go home to see the Crisis Team. Then, when the two staff came to my
home they asked if I would be prepared to go into the psychiatric hospital and
I refused so they told me they would be leaving to organise a Mental Health Act
assessment. So, after they left – thinking they had just been bluffing – I
turned all the lights off in the house and tried to get to sleep, but their car
was parked outside my bedroom, and I remember that every time I heard a noise
come from outside, I was looking out the blinds and their car would still be
there. Now, this sounds like something sort of insignificant in perspective of
the whole process that night, but even almost a year later, if I hear noises outside,
I’m almost immediately thinking that someone is coming to take me to hospital –
even when nothing has happened, and I’ve had no contact with any mental health
services or other professionals! It’s meant that I very rarely feel completely
settled in my bed at night.
I did manage
to fall asleep though that night, and when my phone rang in the early hours of
the morning, I looked outside first and saw that their car was gone then
answered the unknown number calling. It turned out to be a Social Worker who
told me that she, and some other professionals would be coming to my home to
conduct a Mental Health Act assessment at 3am and I was so half asleep that I
just agreed! To be honest, I think a huge part of me still thought this was a
bluff and they would never go through with it. So, when they all (two Social
Workers and two Psychiatrists) showed up at my back door a few hours later,
everything suddenly became very real and, begrudgingly, I led them all into my
sitting room. And it instantly felt tiny because it has one 3-seater sofa and 1
arm chair, so I ended up in the arm chair, the two Social Workers sat on the
sofa, and the Psychiatrists perched on the windowsill!
One of the
largest features of the motivation to section me, was because the professionals
believed me to be experiencing a psychotic episode and a key quality to this
was my belief that my body didn’t belong to me anymore and that something was
controlling my brain. And because of these thoughts, I felt silenced in the
Assessment and so I ended up typing something on my iPad and showing it to one
of the Social Workers who then passed it to the others. It read ‘I can’t talk
when I have no right to speak.’ And with that, one of the Social Workers told
me the other one would be staying with me whilst she and the Psychiatrists went
to ‘talk’ in another room – but really, they were completing the section papers
in my bedroom. The next thing I knew, they were calling an Ambulance to take me
back to A&E to have some self-harm treated and telling me to pack a bag for
a few days.
I ended up
being in A&E until the afternoon when the mental health professionals had
finally found a bed for me in a psychiatric hospital in a nearby city and a
Social Worker came into my A&E room to tell me that I had to wait for the
‘Secure Ambulance’ to arrive to take me to that hospital and said she would be
following us in her car. Sat in this ‘Secure Ambulance’ (which was basically
just like a big six-seater taxi or something!) I had the random, desperate, and
impulsive thought; ‘why don’t I just try to open the door and jump out whilst
it’s moving?’ But I didn’t – to be honest I think I was too tired and the idea
of me battling the three staff sat beside me seemed an impossible feat that I
was far too exhausted to win the wrestling match! And when I say ‘tired’ and
‘exhausted’ I don’t just mean physically… I mean, I felt psychologically
drained too, as though the past almost 48 hours had really taken its toll on my
emotional strength and any sense of resilience felt completely out of reach.
After being
searched and taken to my room in the hospital, I was then called to see the
On-Call Doctor who was meant to do blood tests, take my blood pressure, pulse,
oxygen levels, and prescribe all the medication I’m on. Seeing her, I took it
as an opportunity to point out that the skin around the stitches in my wrist
from a few days previously was starting to really redden and asked whether that
meant it was getting infected. Her response? “That’ll be fine, give it 10 days
like you were told.” For me, this was an instant red flag which hinted to the idea
that she had no respect or compassion for patients and especially for all those
who are sectioned. And – in addition to this – she was proven to be wrong when
the following day my wound/the stitches were oozing yellow gunk, and I was
feeling poorly. Although, admittedly, the rest of the staff continued to dismiss
and ignore me to the point where my Mum actually had to ring around all these
different professionals to finally have a Doctor come look at it and she
instantly prescribed me some antibiotics.
This instance
wasn’t the only reason for my description of the entirety of this admission being
in a way that meant I honestly felt as though now that I had the ‘sectioned’ label
stuck to my forehead, I had suddenly become ‘half a person.’ I mean, the fact
that my Mum had to call the ward?! I may have been sectioned, but that shouldn’t
take away from the fact that I’m a grown adult and my thoughts, feelings,
requests etc shouldn’t be dismissed or completely ignored! I mean when I asked one
member of staff if I could have a razor – and even said that I didn’t mind using
it under supervision – and they said they’d find out, they didn’t return. So, I’d
ask the next member of staff who came in my room and that went on until I’d
asked five members of staff (who had all said they’d find out and come back!) and
eventually decided to brave leaving my room and I ended up sat outside the
staff office. To add to this already stupid situation, it then turned out that
they needed a qualified Nurse to agree to giving me the razor and – against all
guidelines and good practice – all of them were off the ward at the same time
(apparently having a de-brief).
My fear at
coming out of my room was because I felt that the ward didn’t once go at least
maybe eight (I’m trying to estimate in a way that doesn’t sound overexaggerated,
but which is also close to the truth!) consecutive hours without an alarm going
off, which would typically by followed by screaming, footsteps, banging, swearing,
thumping, and crying. Looking back on the way I was treated by staff though; I
now wonder whether at least half of the incidents of inpatients ‘kicking off’
were due to the frustration of being badly treated…?
The two
helpful aspects to this admission were firstly that it did mean I was put into
an environment where the ways in which I was self-harming were so much more
difficult and that meant I had the opportunity for the second helpful aspect to
happen. So, secondly – with the professionals considering that my lack of sleep
for the two weeks previous to the admission was a precursor for the psychotic episode
– I was given a sleeping tablet a couple of times and that really helped me to
catch-up on my rest and gain the energy to fight and ignore the strange thoughts
and beliefs.
Recognising
that the admission still had been somewhat beneficial, meant that when I was
finally discharged, I genuinely thought long and hard about putting in a
complaint with the Trust and raising the ward’s failures and faults with the
Care Quality Commission (CQC). And yes, I came to the conclusion to do these
things and that decision mainly stemmed from my thoughts that not only were the
staff’s actions fundamentally wrong and unfair; I didn’t see them as anything personal
– I recognised the likelihood that they were responding to – and treating – other
patients in this way. This meant I felt compelled to speak up not just for myself,
but also on behalf of everyone else. And I actually can’t honestly pay enough
gratitude to the Trust and CQC for their responses to the complaint. The Trust
allocated an Investigating Officer, and I eventually received a twelve-page
report on which each of the incidents and failures I had specifically mentioned
were in bold with the investigation result beneath and beneath that they had
put a ‘actions’ headline where they detailed everything the Trust will do so
that these things don’t happen again. Obviously, it wasn’t the layout of their
response I was grateful for(!) – it was that each of those incidents and
failures I reported, were upheld and the Investigating Officer had detailed all
the evidence she had found which proved each of my accusations to be correct.
The difficulty here is the recognition and almost forced acceptance that all those things happened to me and that the apologies and all the actions to avoid the repetition of those things didn’t mean that everything that had happened to me could be taken back in anyway at all. I had to focus on the hope that I might have helped prevent these things happening to others too. And in the Trust recognising their failures, I was also faced with the fact that I now felt contradicting opinions of it and all of it’s Services. On the one hand I thought their admittance was admirable because there are so many organisations and professionals who will take complaints as an opportunity to lie or excuse their actions and attitudes rather than a chance to recognise their wrongdoing and see it as a learning curve. Yet, on the other hand, how could I ever confide in or seek help and support from a Trust who had staff capable of committing all of these things? I tried to look at it with the ‘treat others how you’d like to be treated’ and thought about if I had admitted to treating someone badly, I wouldn’t want everyone to stop trusting me and ending their relationships or connections with me.
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Pretty Little
Liars on Amazon Prime Video
THE LARGEST NEW COLLABORATION
PARTNER OF 2023 & AN EXCLUSIVE LOOK INTO OUR UPCOMING WORK FOR 2024
Back in April
2022, I received an email detailing the opportunity to work with the Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals
NHS Foundation Trust (NUTH) on their upcoming mental health strategy and in
February 2023, I finally published my very first blog post in collaboration with
the Trust (which you can read here).
For me, working with this Trust has actually been a huge career goal – which I
actually talked about more in our second collaboration post in May (which you can
read here).
I’ve viewed this Trust as important because in 2012, when I made a suicide
attempt, they used the Mental Capacity Act, and I was put on life support to
receive the lifesaving medical treatment for what I had done. And as a result
of that admission, I went to the specialist psychiatric hospital where I
received the Dialectical Behaviour Therapy that really helped.
In August
2023, I published another collaboration post with NUTH (which you can read here)
where I talked about how helpful the Trust had been in a recent mental health crisis/related
admission and how their response filled me with more passion and dedication to
continue working together. And so, our final public collaboration of the year
came in November and was specifically to mark Stress Awareness Day (you can
read it here).
So, our upcoming
project which we began work on earlier in December… I was asked by the Mental Capacity
Act Lead for NUTH if I could film something with the Trust that could be added
as a module to the online training their staff undertake in understanding and
using the Capacity Act on patients or service users! I mean, isn’t this the
kind of opportunity that is right up my street?! So, of course I said ‘yes!’ Right
now, we’ve completed one take of the filming and decided not to repeat it unless
we think anything needs to be re-done when watching it back and editing it –
which is the stage we’re onto now and I honestly can’t wait to see it!
FINISHING THE YEAR AS THE UK’S #1
BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER BLOG…
