Mental Illness and the UK - A Culture of Respect, Concern and Compassion

An article from the BBC website, this Friday just gone:


"ARREST OF ASBO 'SUICIDE' WOMAN

A woman given an Asbo for making repeated suicide attempts was arrested near cliffs just hours after failing to overturn the order, it has emerged.

Emergency services were called out near Aberystwyth last Friday to Amy Beth Dallamura, 45, of Hove, Sussex.

Aberystwyth magistrates had refused to lift her anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) just hours earlier.

A previous court hearing heard how she had cost emergency services nearly £1m after they had rescued her 50 times.

Ms Dallamura moved to live with relatives in Hove in September last year.

But she returned to Aberystwyth, where she once lived, on 20 February to try to persuade magistrates to lift the Asbo which banned her from going in the sea, onto beaches or the promenade in the town.

The refused, saying it would remain in place until further notice.

But later that day shortly before midnight, Dyfed-Powys Police, the ambulance service and the coastguard were called to Borth, near Aberystwyth.

Ms Dallamura was on cliffs near the village, said police. She was arrested, but was released without charge.

Earlier that day in court, she apologised for the concern she had caused in Aberystwyth.

But she argued that her Asbo was 'no longer necessary'.

Temporary Chief Inspector Mark James of Aberystwyth police said: 'We received a report from the ambulance service that they had been alerted to her being on the cliffs over Borth. It was outside the area from which she is excluded. She was arrested and released without further action.'

The Asbo was imposed for an indefinite period in January 2006 after Ms Dallamura, a former golf professional, made repeated suicide attempts.

She had waded out to sea and leapt off piers, jetties, rocks and cliffs when she lived in the Ceredigion seaside town.

Ms Dallamura breached her Asbo in 2007 and received a two-year supervision order."



I just don't think I have the words. We live in a society where mental health is seen as a priority only insofar as its effects "bother" other, "normal" people. We get headlines about Schizophrenia when an affected individual commits a violent act against someone else, bemoaning that they weren't locked up or "controlled" better. We get tabloid articles, and occasional ignorant and grossly misinformed comments from politicians, about how Clinical Depression either doesn't exist, or is best treated by the affected individual "pulling their socks up" and getting on with it. We are constantly reminded how much "these people" cost the NHS, the Benefits System, and the country generally, with the clear implication that "they" are lazy, work-shy, good-for-nothings sponging off decent ordinary folks.

And now, we have a woman in dire need who should be getting truckloads of medical help and resources thrown at her, effectively criminalized for being sick.

Mental Health services vary wildly depending on where you live, and how far you are able to advocate assertively for yourself (something, by the way, that is often particularly hard for people with mental health problems). My own experience of this patchy provision includes having to re-explain my situation again and again to a series of apparently random doctors and nurses, none of whom spoke English as a first language, and some of whom responded to me in ways which suggested that they only had the most cursory grasp of what I was trying to communicate, before being told to try going to Marriage Counselling.

At the time, I was suicidal, completely incapable of regulating my own mood or taking any control over the vicious cyclical ruminations that completely dominated my consciousness. I made serious efforts to try and get this across to the parade of mildly-bored professionals I had struggled to get the chance to see. On some occasions, my then-husband was with me, and in his frustration and bone-gnawing worry made valiant attempts to put his foot down and prevent them from fobbing me off completely. I was made to feel as though I were seriously wasting everybody's time, and it rapidly got to the stage where I strongly suspected that they didn't actually give a fuck if I lived or died. I wasn't wielding a machete and gibbering about how the voices were telling me to kill kill kill. If anyone died, it would "only" be me - a damaged, pathetic, resource-wasting person. So why invest time and energy?

We ended up concocting fraudulent evidence that we actually lived at my in-laws' address, in order to access better services in a different part of London. If we hadn't done that, I wonder if I would still be alive today.

But then, who cares? If I had thrown myself off a cliff, the only concern would presumably have been for the trouble and expense I was putting people to by necessitating the involvement of the Emergency Services.

My condition is now much better-managed, and I am able to find pleasures and satisfactions in life that I would never have thought possible again eight years ago. But even maintaining this level of stability and functionality is very hard work, and involves the contributions of extensive support services and resources. I am not able to work outside the home, and am therefore dependent on Social Security for my meagre income. That in itself is enough to make me worse than shite in the minds of many people.

Amy Dallamura and I are not pariahs. We are people. We have the same rights to first-rate medical care and simple human respect as anybody else who suffers from a serious illness. My illness has threatened my life, and sometimes I feel as though my society is a little miffed that I survived.

But You Don't Really Care For Music, Do You?

So, it looks as if it's all over bar the counting. One way or another, my favourite song ever written is going to be the UK's Chrismukkah No1.

In the last couple of days, a young lady named Alexandra won the TV talent contest, X-Factor, and her cover version of The Cohen's Hallelujah hit the (largely virtual) shelves today. Almost immediately, various internet campaigns began to prevent this single reaching number one in the charts - largely predicated around encouraging people to pay en masse for downloads of Jeff Buckley's cover. The original is also now in the charts, although languishing far below.

I cannot claim to have watched The X-Factor, nor to know very much about this year's winner. I'm sure she's a lovely person, and I congratulate her on her achievement and wish her all the best in the future. But I find myself sympathizing with those who would do her down, and actively try to thwart her festive success. Why?

Is this just snobbery? The X-Factor is a proley show for proles, and the proles shouldn't presume to mess with the sacred texts of us poetry-loving intellectuals? Maybe it is. Maybe it is just that. This does not seem like a very noble emotion to feel, least of all towards a nice young woman who has worked incredibly hard to bring her talents to fruition.

I sincerely hope that this is not the alpha and the omega of it, not least because I have no desire to be forced to think of myself as a priggish, small-minded cunt. I hope it is a little more complex than that.

When I first heard Leonard Cohen sing Hallelujah, and in the hour that followed, while I listened to it over and over again, letting the lyrics and the incredible chord progressions first hit me like a sledgehammer and then soak inexorably into my malnourished spiritual bones, it quite simply changed my life. Just as with Like A Rolling Stone a decade earlier, I experienced a moment of clarity and kinship that turned me inside out - a moment of pure fucking-hell-he-just-said-EXACTLY-what-I've-been-trying-to-grasp-at-so-impotently-in-my-own-writhing-mind. It's not something you recover from quickly or easily, or, indeed, ever.

And at the end of the day, it's hard to see an artefact that has profoundly helped me to clarify my feelings about g*d and the universe, taken by someone innocent and unconcerned and turned into something mawkish, superficial and, in the end, ordinary. A damn good tune that lends itself well to an accomplished, soaring female voice, with some weird-ass incomprehensible lyrics thrown in.

I hope that it is this, rather than simple snobbery, that is giving me that slightly cold feeling in my abdomen whenever I think about mindless goons swaying to Alexandra's Hallelujah in the BBC studio on Christmas Day.

44

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer."


Ladies and Gentlemen, it's official. The Star-Spangled Banner in triumph still waves, o'er the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

President-Elect Obama has a long and hard road ahead of him. He and his administration will make mistakes, as every administration does. His presidency will not be perfect. There will be challenges and difficulties, triumphs, compromises and disappointments. Nobody doubts that.

But, just as we did on September 12th 2001, we wake up today to a new world - a world irrevocably changed. Except that this morning, it is the light of hope, and not the spectre of fear, that greets us - that allows us to see, if only for a moment, our world as a place transformed, a place of unlimited potential.

Because no matter what happens in the next four years, the simple truth is that symbols matter. Hope matters. Faith matters. Attitude matters. Belief in a better future matters. The grandmother turning on her TV this morning, who remembers having to drink at a different water fountain matters.

I have bought newspapers this morning to keep for my children.

God bless America.

Tomorrow's World?

"Rosa Parks sat so that Martin Luther King could walk. Martin Luther King walked so that Obama could run. Obama's running so that we all can fly. I can't wait until 5 November and I'm going to say 'Hello, Brother President'. I can't tell you who to vote for. All I can do is tell you to vote."

Jay-Z, rapper


There's a knot in my stomach. Partly it's excitement. Partly it's a vague and leaden kind of fear. Partly it's that most frightening of emotions - hope.

America - deep inside my heart - I believe in you.

I believe in Ginsberg and Kerouac, Steinbeck and Miller. I believe in Tarantino. I believe in Loving v Virginia. I believe in Steven Spielberg. I believe in Matt Groening. I believe in Woodward and Bernstein, Rawls and Dworkin, Marshall Mathers, Edward Hopper, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ben Cardozo. I believe in John Denver, Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette, in the First Amendment, in Abe Lincoln, in Santa Monica pier. I believe in Mrs Parks and Dr King and Senator Obama.

There's a knot in my stomach. And I know that it will not ease until the early hours of Wednesday, when we shall know if the sun is rising on a new world.

The Myth Of Perfection

Why don't I blog more often?

I often ask myself that. I enjoy updating my blog, having a bit of a mental and verbal meander, and saying hello to whoever is out there reading this.

The truth is almost certainly one of a perceived issue of quality. If what I write today, or what I write tomorrow, or what I write next month, isn't witty and wonderful and sparklingly original, so the fuck what? I'm not trying to be Dostoevsky here. But nonetheless I feel this pressure to be more than myself, to have something deeply "meaningful" to say, or to be interesting in some kind of abstract, objective way. All of this is bullshit. I'm not a little girl anymore, trying to impress my teachers or my parents, or even an exam board. I'm a grown woman of intelligence and warmth, and I shouldn't need to feel as though I am always "performing" for a shadowy judgemental audience.

The other thing is a lingering sense that I have to exude an air of completeness, certainty, and assuredness about my life. As if I cannot fully and openly admit to the world, without any shame or self-doubt, that my life (like everyone else's life) is a work in progress.

I have doubts about decisions, beliefs, relationships - sometimes the way I feel or decide to react to things changes. There is nothing embarrassing about sharing this with others, with friends and strangers.

If they pretend that their lives do not contain the same uncertainties - the same sense of evolution and lessons learned - they are almost certainly lying.

So enough with the weird self-consciousness, I say. I didn't call this blog "Broken Hallelujah" for no reason. It's time to be out and proud.

Med Compliance

So, yesterday, I rang the doctors' surgery and sorted out my repeat prescription for Fluoxetine, which will be ready for me to pick up on Tuesday.

Good stuff, right?

Except that, by yesterday, I'd already run out.

I'm not usually so lax. I usually have it written in my diary a week before I'm due to run out. Call doc, rpt presc. Or something. But this month I've fucked it up and been an airhead. And, actually, not checking my diary that regularly.

Now, it's not a disaster. I'm not going to throw myself off a tall building before Tuesday. Gone are the days when I would have had to present myself to an A&E immediately in this situation. But I am going to have a fairly crappy few days.

Next month, more organization, less space cadetery.

The OC

About fifteen minutes ago I finished watching the season finale of Series One. Ever since then, I have been swallowing analgesics and drinking lucozade to replace lost electrolytes.

Yes, I cried that hard.

Fuck cinema, people. TV is it. The natural heir of Charles Dickens. The major literary form of our time.