Tuesday 15 February 2011

What Then and Where Now?


Sometimes as I prepare to write my blog I start to wonder if there’s anything left to say. But then some little thing will happen that makes me realise that there is nearly always something to say.

This week, two questions have come to mind: (1) ‘What then?’ and (2) ‘Where now?’ I’ll deal with the ‘What then?’ first.

Thanks to the wonders of social networking, I received a message this week from one of my old school classmates from the mid-1970s. This was someone I knew immediately before I experienced the events that ‘inspired’ my novel Delivered Unto Lions. She told me that, as far as she knew, I had just ‘disappeared’ from school with no explanation. Having become aware of my book, she now realised what had happened – that I’d been taken away from school (and home) and placed in a psychiatric unit because I was depressed.

This made me think of three other children who went to that same school who were also (at different times) ‘spirited away’ to the very same psychiatric institution. I didn’t know any of them while I was at that school, but I got to know them at the institution. This makes me wonder whether their sudden absences went unexplained in the same way that mine did. After all, I certainly hadn’t been aware of anyone ‘disappearing’ like that, but at least one of those ‘disappearances’ had happened before mine.

It is a horrible thought that, on certain (comparatively rare) occasions, children could simply be plucked out of their schools almost unnoticed. Their friends would wonder what had happened to them, of course, and no doubt some vague words of non-explanation would have been offered. But unless a child eventually returned to his or her school (some children did, some didn’t), life for everyone else would just go on, and that child would be gone and (in the end) virtually forgotten.

And that brings me to the ‘Where now?’

I have been greatly encouraged by the shift towards Care in the Community which began in the late 1980s, and which by the mid-’90s had seen many of these old children’s units closed. Care in the Community has its critics, of course – and often for good reason – but I tend to focus on the idea that a child with depression, anxiety, or some other similar condition, is far better off in as normal environment as possible, rather than being ‘incarcerated’ in a clinical and often hostile mental unit.

The hope is that things are far better these days, and that far fewer troubled children get institutionalised. But how can we be sure of this? The fact is that, prior to the rise of Care in the Community, very few people were aware that it happened anyway. So, if it was still happening today, would we notice?

This may sound like I’m being a little alarmist. Perhaps I am. But what prompts this is what I've found (which isn't much) from my attempts to discover exactly what does happen today. Unless you are a mental health professional, your are unlikely ever to have come across the Royal College of Psychiatrists' directory of children's units. This, however, lists all the child and adolescent mental health in-patient units in Britain and Ireland – and there are actually quite a lot of them!

I'm not going to start flinging wild accusations about. My hope (and my belief) is that these present-day units are far more compassionate and empathetic places than the ones that used to exist. But they are still well-hidden. Unless you go looking for these places, you'll never know anything about them.

My book is about exposing a hidden world from the recent past (and Wikipedia helps too!). But there remains a hidden world in the present. What I would like to see is more transparency, so that society as a whole – as well as healthcare providers – can scrutinise current practice and ensure that it is just and caring.
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Delivered Unto Lions by David Austin is published by CheckPoint Press
ISBN 978-1-906628-21-5
For more information visit www.davidaustin.eu

4 comments:

  1. I 'disappeared' from my school and all my schoolfriends forty-eight years ago! I don't know if any of them ever give me or the times we shared together a thought now. I recently looked up my old secondary school on Friends Reunited and was filled with a feeling of nostalgia as I recognised many names and saw how their lives have developed over almost half a century. A boyfriend now lives in Australia and is a successful photographer, another friend runs her own business in Switzerland.....I was tempted to sat 'Hi!' but how do I explain 'a mistake was made and I was whisked off to a mental hospital----that's why I didn't return to my desk......' At the time of my admission to Merrifield Unit, I was forced to relinquish the right to my normal life and the tangible things that went with it. Life turned out okay for me eventually but I can't help thinking 'what if-----'

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  2. Hi Anonymous. Is your name listed on Friends Reunited? If so, you might find that someone contacts you.

    It is very strange when we look back and we see a very definite and sudden change in our lives that completely alters the course we are on. And it has some sort of impact on those who were around us (classmates, etc.) too. It may not be life changing for them, but I certainly remember occasions at school when a child may have moved away, and that changed the make-up of the class.

    You talk of having 'disappeared' from your school 48 years ago. I couldn't help thinking that, 48 years ago, I was in a very safe place (the womb!).

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  3. Hi, David,
    No my name is not on Friends Reunited -- I am not yet ready to talk to those people who, almost half a century ago, were a big part of my daily life. I don't know if I could cope with knowing that they do not remember me and I do not know how I would explain what happened to me. I felt hurt at the time that I did not even come under the school's sort of parochial umbrella whereby it was a tradition to send greetings to anyone in the class who was hospitalised or absent due to illness at any time. I received no messages of any kind so the way was not even open for me to respond with a gesture of thanks and keep in contact that way. I suppose (soppy and selfish as it now sounds!) I felt rejected and dejected -- and would be afraid of the same degree of apathy today if I were to announce 'I'm still around'/ I'm sorry if that all sounds pathetic -- maybe some hurt doesn't go away! -- mcsl

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  4. I think that all sounds perfectly understandable, Anonymous - not at all soppy and selfish. What happened to you all those years ago was a major, traumatic, life-changing event. I still feel very strongly about what happened to me 35 years ago (this very month), and although I've had a little bit of contact with one or two people from that time, it isn't possible now, as an adult, to restore childhood friendships that were cut off so abruptly and so long ago. I'm not sure I would describe what I feel as 'rejected and dejected' (although there is an element of that in there somewhere) - what I feel is a sense of something cut off and finished, and which can never be properly resolved. I suppose it's a kind of grief; it may lessen over the years, but it doesn't competely go away. Anyway, we are where we are - and for me that's a much better place to be.

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