No Shame in Sheffield!

It was an amazing opportunity to be involved in the Time To Change stunt which took place on a working Sheffield tram on 25th and 26th of January.  It felt controversial, we were presenting the people of Sheffield with a tram compartment redesigned as 'padded cell', a symbol which is associated with the more negative aspects of mental health, we were thrusting it upon them and almost forcing comment, and that was challenging and exciting.
  
It also presented us, as the people with 'lived experience of mental health' with the possibility of facing an onslaught of stigma and discrimination, and we had no idea how we would be received. 
 
It's been suggested that the stunt merely afforded us the opportunity to "preach to the converted", however that was not my experience.  We did encounter some deeply entrenched views, people really did think that the U.K still placed people in acute care into "padded cells" and were genuinely surprised when we explained that this practice had been phased out.  One chap asked me "Well where else would you put them when they are a danger to themselves?"  People were surprised to find that 1 person in 4 would encounter some difficulty with their mental health at some time in their life, and admitted to not having considered that 'stress', 'anxiety' and 'post natal depression' counted within those statistics. 
 
So many of the people we encountered over the two days willingly discussed how they had themselves been affected by mental health, and one gentleman explained that following the loss of his partner to cancer, he had been severely depressed, but unable to talk to anyone and had feigned a bad back at work.  It was humbling to meet an elderly lady who said she was schizophrenic and that she fully supported the campaign because her illness has not stopped her enjoying her life, and supporting her daughter who has learning difficulties. She made a very poignant remark as she got up to get off the tram, she said "it's frightening to think that I would have probably been locked up in one of these in the not so distant past, and what would have happened to my daughter then?"
 
I was most inspired by the response of the young people who were so curious about what the stunt was all about.  Getting into discussions with them revealed a startling gap within education.  Some said that they were taught mental health within schools and college, some colleges even had a specialist team for students, yet other young people had received no education on the subject at all.  ALL said they thought that there should be more teaching and discussion within education - and that was heartening!
 
The 'padded cell' itself freaked some people out and it really opened the doors to discussions around how people who were already unwell and scared must have felt when placed inside one, without the opportunity to hop off at the next stop. The very thought of the windowless world into which traumatised people were thrust was something which people had not had to think about before, and I applaud the people of Sheffield for being prepared to challenge their own views and opinions and for their willingness to listen!