WHO I AM AND MY EXPERIENCES OF BEING SECTIONED
Abertay student nurses 25 April 2022.
Hello
Before I start this talk in any detail – I will give a reality check – this is my perspective and not necessarily similar to anyone else’s perspective or viewpoint. However first some statistics.
This is from a recent survey of 1000 people by Bipolar UK : 54% of them had experienced being sectioned and of those 74% thought, in hindsight, it was necessary but despite thinking it necessary a large number also found it to be traumatic and of course, it is rare that we think it necessary when we are in the midst of being sectioned.
I am not too sure how to give this talk especially the bit about who I am. My name is Graham Morgan, I am the father to my son Calum but have not seen him for many, many years, I was married once and left that marriage pretty much devastated. I am a writer, some of you will have already met me at the book club where I talked from and read from my memoir START.
Many, many, years ago I was a very incompetent yacht skipper but was lucky enough to sail across the Atlantic a few times and the Med and to wander around the islands and coral reefs of the South China Seas.
I used to live in the Highlands and have very happy memories of cross country skiing at Glenmore in the winter and of red squirrels and deer in our garden. I have worked in mental health for about thirty years either as a collective advocacy development worker or manager or as an engagement worker. I currently work with the Mental Welfare Commission and am joint vice chair of the Scottish review of mental health legislation which will be producing its final report this September.
I also have a diagnosis of schizophrenia and have been detained under the mental health act a few times and have been on a compulsory treatment order for the last 12 years.
Oh! and my life is very good indeed. I live with my partner Wendy and her twins Charlotte and James as well as Dash the dog and the two rabbits; Bon Bon and Pumpkin.
I see my psychiatrist about three times a year and I see my CPN every two weeks or at least I used to. I am just transferring to a depot clinic where someone or other will give me my jag and every four weeks I will speak to my CPN.
That says very little about me! I am very bad in social situations but usually love being in them even if I would prefer to sit in a corner and hide at them. I love walking in the wind and in the sun and rain. I drink to stop thinking and I have the radio on through the night to drown out my thoughts.
I was first diagnosed with a personality disorder when I was about twenty and busy convinced there was no point to my life and also busy self harming. That was thirty nine years ago. Treatment then was very different. I spent time in one of the old asylums and found out for the first time that I might be detained if I left the ward. It was a surprise and a great shock to me.
That diagnosis disappeared when I was around twenty eight about five months after my son was born. I was exhausted and bewildered and very, very, confused about being a father and a responsible citizen. After some weeks of increasing desperation and sleeplessness, my world catapulted into some new realm. I realised that I was possessed by devils and that every reflected light from the sea or the sunshine or lightbulbs was created by those devils interfering with my thoughts. I realised that my blood was toxic and poisoned and that if I were to touch my son or wife or anyone really, they would be at risk of being infected by me. At the time it seemed logical to me that I needed to drain all the evil from me and that is when I first got sectioned.
I cannot remember how long I was in hospital but I do know that though I was sectioned I was never told I was, that it was many years later that an MHO found the paperwork that revealed this.
It was the start of a pattern, I would stop my medication, or it would be changed and I would get more and more tired and wakeful and confused and at some point I would find myself in hospital.
My last talk of today goes into this in more detail but I would like to give some idea of what it feels like; to be honest, how I was treated thirty years ago was pretty similar to nowadays.
I think I am grateful that I am kept alive at such times but have very mixed thoughts about this as a large part of me thinks I am partly responsible for the ending of the world and that it might be better for all concerned if I was not a part of it.
When I get into hospital I am usually exhausted, it will be quite possible that I have not been washing or looking after myself, often I will arrive with just my lap top and the clothes I am in. I might not know the hospital or the nurses and will both know that I am about to be sectioned and also not know that. I will be convinced I should act in a way that would probably lead to my death and sure that hospital is not the place for me. I will be worried about who I will meet and what I will say to them and at the same time oblivious to all that. I may be planning to go on hunger strike and I may already have ways of harming myself organised.
People will also be organising me, finding me a room, asking me questions, searching my possessions and I will not be interested in this but I will be trying to be polite. They will be telling me that they will need to give me a medical examination and probably trying to let me know about the routine of the ward but I won’t be interested in this either.
To start with I won’t sleep, I may walk round and round the ward trying to find some great revelation by trying to walk until I get to some destination I don’t really understand. I may be followed by the nurses. I may try to carry on doing my work on my lap top.
I most probably won’t speak to anyone to start with but at the same time will be very, very conscious of the people who stop me walking off the ward, or harming myself with torn up drinks cans or kettles of boiling water. I will hate having to go to the toilet in front of people as I am very private in these matters. I will hate showering in front of people or going to sleep for night after night with the door open and the light on and a nurse sat on a chair watching me.
At the same time I will be craving some sort of connection and indications that the nurses don’t hate me or resent me or dislike me and maybe even more than that, indications that in another life they might have wanted to know me in some way, to share a meal or have a drink in a pub. I will absolutely hate that I am not allowed off the ward, and over the weeks the thought of stepping on the grass or walking in the woods or going into town on my own will be my ideal that I pray will happen again. Equally I will pray that I can have privacy, no one looking at me, or asking me questions or making me take medication, or for that matter helping me try to relax when I cannot sleep.
I will be dreaming of when I am out of hospital and can sit down and have a whisky or a glass of wine with people I love and care for, when I can make a meal from scratch and sleep in a bed with cotton sheets instead of a plastic protector that means I wake up each morning with the sheets soaked in my sweat.
As time goes by and life eases I will know which of the nurses I trust and those I don’t. I will get to know patients and some of them will like me and we will share evenings watching films in front of the telly and others will not like me; will ask me why my legs are constantly juddering up and down and why I don’t talk or for that matter why I killed their baby.
I will need reminded to shower and shave and I will get very, very, bored. Eventually once I have calmed down a bit I will slowly start getting involved in the ward. I might do the arts stuff or get taken for walks off the ward. I might begin to sit at a table with people I know when I come to eat my meal.
I will have been given my section papers and will have put them in my bedside locker never to be looked at again. I will have seen my MHO and been told I am on a section. I will have gone to the ward round and said I want to have the right to self-harm and will have been ignored. I will have been told that unless I accept my injection that it will have to be given by force and that that will be frightening and traumatic for everyone and I will have been frightened enough by that to agree to it.
I will get, as I have already said, but it needs repeated, get very, very, bored indeed. As time goes by the restrictions will ease and I will be allowed off the ward to activities and off the ward for escorted walks and that will be lovely and one day I will be delighted to be allowed off the ward on my own. I will be tempted to just run away but I won’t.
Not too long after that, after my repeated requests to be discharged I will be at home getting ready to go back to work far too quickly for my own good. I will be confused, I will for ever hate the sound when the alarms go off, as they remind me of when I have been chased down hospital corridors. I will loath hospital and the thought of returning and have to remind myself that most of the people for most of the time tried to be as kind and respectful to me as they could be – but despite that I will have memories of those that didn’t and a weariness at this life where spontaneity is difficult and sometimes hope far off and then I will remember my friends and those I love and by and by the memories will become less harsh…..
Thank you
(photo - North of Helensburgh Feb 2022
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