Is there stigma in mental health services?

I had to fight The Priory Hospital in my own struggle against discrimination. And I lost, and as a result my life has been blighted forever.

They didn’t like me. Why, I don’t know, except perhaps that I’m a professional psychologist and a good one at that. But I needed help with post-traumatic stress disorder, and being a psychologist doesn’t help – as I put it, knowing the map doesn’t absolve you from the journey.

My last night at The Priory kicked off with an interview with a very unpleasant nurse who refused to listen to my concerns – including one highly specific concern that the Occupational Therapist had, that morning, told us that ‘nobody ever harmed themselves or anyone else through anxiety.’ This is, of course, arrant nonsense, and I mentioned that for every name on the Vietnam Veterans Wall there are two suicides, and I quoted the statistics for anxiety disorders in Vietnam Vets. Although the Priory’s brochure states that ‘staff are trained to accept feedback,’ the O.T. got very angry about it and wrote in my notes that I had been ‘rude to the staff.’ The nurse who visited me later said that I didn’t need to talk about it as the O.T. had already written it up!

When the nurse left me, I was so upset (the whole stay had been nightmarish; this was just another part of the nightmare) that I went to my car to get a book. On the way there I met a male patient who sexually propositioned me in a very insulting manner. I was too exhausted to report it to the night staff – all I wanted was to be left alone. But the male patient went to the staff and told them that I’d invited him back to my room for vodka and sex. Next thing I knew the door burst open, and in walked two nurses straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest; they wanted me to take a breathalyser. (No one investigated the truth of the other patient’s story). I was too distressed to use the breathalyser, so the nurses hit me on my back until I vomited. After that, they got their positive reading – because I’d been out shopping that afternoon and had met some friends for a pizza and a glass of wine (permitted off-premises). The expressions of brutal glee on their face were only matched by the triumph in the voice of my psychiatrist on the phone; several days earlier, he’d told me that I had a problem with alcohol. This diagnosis was based on one abnormal liver function reading several years previously that had led, as I told him, to a diagnosis of congestive heart failure. Never in my life have I abused alcohol, but would he believe it?

The hell got worse during the rest of that night. I had a prescription for sleeping pills ‘at need’ and I brought the first one up. The duty nurse promised to save it while I tried to calm down; when I want back for it, she looked at me triumphantly and said that she’s thrown it away. I asked for another one – or for some diazepam – and she lied and said that there was no doctor on duty to prescribe. So I went back to my room, which smelled of vomit, and tried playing music to send myself into a fitful sleep …

Before I tell you what happened after that – their manipulations and deceptions – I’ll tell you a little about what the earlier part of my stay had been like. More than once they made a mistake about my drugs, leaving me in severe pain for hours because the psychiatrist had withdrawn them. Although I had problems with my sleep cycle, they wanted me to get up at half-past six to see the psychiatrist at half-past seven, thereby missing breakfast (and who feels like discussing their woes at that time in the morning). Several of the advertised activities were cancelled, and the games and jigsaws in the Patients’ Lounge all had pieces missing.

Let me tell you about the Quiz on the first Tuesday. When someone says the word Quiz, you imagine something interactive, in teams, discussion and maybe even laughter … don’t you? What actually happened was that a woman came into the room and dished out eleven separate answer sheets – one per person – opened the Daily Telegraph Book of Quizzes, and read out the questions, in an atmosphere of total silence. It was awful. Most people had only got about one-tenth of the answers correct, and I couldn’t see the point of taking a bunch of depressed people and making them even more depressed by getting them to fail in silence.

So the following Tuesday I designed and gave my own Quiz. I got them working as a team; I had a good mixture of questions, so that there was something for everyone to do; I’d provided silly prizes. There was a good deal of laughter and team spirit – and one young lad, who’d been silent and withdrawn every time I’d met him previously, was joyous because he got some of the answers right, and later he gave me a hug and said ‘You’re a nice lady.’

By the way, if you look at the notes that Priory staff made about me, you’ll not find a single mention of that afternoon’s activity. What you will find in their notes – and I was personally and professionally horrified when I later came to read them – are a great many unpleasant personal remarks and nasty comments about my personality.

Oh, let’s pass over all the other things they did wrong while I was there, and go on to what happened after I left. I was in a hell of a state – not only had they done nothing for the condition I’d been in when I arrived, I’d been sexually harassed, been hit by the nurses, the victim of injustice, and was close to a clinical depression. That was made worse when I went back to see the psychiatrist. He refused to talk about the sexual harassment, but he did tell me that four other patients had complained about me … an accusation he was later forced to withdraw, but not before it had done considerable damage. Later I caught him out in a number of other lies – as well as discovering that he proclaims himself an Evangelical Christian.

It took six months before I succeeded in getting a manager from The Priory to come and see me. He affected to be horrified by what I told him. I said to him that I wanted some financial compensation because I hadn’t been able to work since leaving his establishment, and I wanted to see my notes and if necessary have them corrected. He promised speedy action on both those points.

Nine months later came a letter from The Priory’s loss adjuster saying that because I had accepted the manager’s apology, they owed me nothing. And it took a further nine months before the manager wrote saying that I would not be allowed to amend my notes because it was ‘not appropriate.’ (That’s illegal, by the way). And so, as far as I know, my medical notes contain a bunch of libels.

You can’t fight The Priory. The owner had a top-flight legal team that got him out of hot water on several occasions; no solicitor would take me on, penniless and ill as I was. I went to them for help with the psychiatric equivalent of a broken leg, and came out with the psychiatric equivalent of necrotising fasciitis. But I’ve left instructions that all the material concerning them is to be published after my death.

As a person with a so called 'mental health' issue - I actually don't - I have emotions due to past events but hey ho the NHS has it's terminology. I worked in the NHS, disclosed that I had suffered from depression and was asked if I was 'over it'. Not only that, I had to listen to colleagues making snide remarks about patients, people having panic attacks for 'no reason' and I wondered who the hell was actually employing some of these people who don't give a shit about the patients. Sorry but it's true. And I walked out of my job in disgust at the hypocrisy.

Its nice to know that channels exist to help you
even when you are very ill and can't do much to help yourself out of situations that occur around you or to you that might need action because they are dodgy due to stigma and so on when you can hardly realise this because of the illness.
We do notice when the care is good and professional and often it is.Nobody likes feeling
second class due a mental health problem.Our thoughts and personality get tied up in knots around the illness and we are just not ourselves.
So we appear useless and dysfunctional and maybe
the rest of the world thinks we are for a moment.
Its a bitter experience for a time.But I believe
its got meaning even if others think its useless.