(The tears were good, BM. I haven't cried at all since I got out. I think a good cry is cathartic and I also think it is good for the health, in an unbottling way. I had wanted to cry for ages and I couldn't. I don't know why your post set me off but it felt a bit like a watershed. Well, it was literally a watershed, but I feel a lot better for it.)
Thanks, Tantrums, I'll have another look.
I wouldn't just say it was learning difficulty sufferers (if that is the right word; I am thinking of one person in particular there. It was also people who were on so many drugs that they didn't really know what they were doing, or it may have been the side-effects).
There was a complete lack of human dignity. Every hour, and this was particularly intrusive at night, the staff would come into (I'll say my, instead of one, but it happened to everyone) my room. For the first three months I tried to sleep as much as I could during the day, just to miss all of the 'fun and laughter' on the ward. It wasn't until March that I realised that this was taken as yet another symptom of a mental illness so after this realisation I quickly made sure that my light was out in time for the midnight check.
This night time checking was a particular bugbear of Arthur's. He said they would go into his room, turn the light on and say, 'Aren't you asleep?' And he would say, or think, 'I was asleep until you turned on the light and woke me up, you moron.'
I suppose the rationale for this was to check that the inmate had not committed suicide, but there was no way to commit suicide in there. The irony is that by the time the inmate is released they presumably all have access to ropes and washing lines. I'd love to know the statistics on suicides of people who have been released. Though of course, this would all be conveniently put down to, as is every event, their mental illness.
There seemed to me to be a lot of power games. The treat of IM in my case kept me in permanent fear. Patients had to wait for a member of staff to accompany them to the courtyard for a cigarette. Even if, in my case, I was barefooted. I would be hardly likely to make a dash for freedom in barefoot.
But the worst thing, and the most shocking thing to me, personally, was that no one, no one, made any attempt to talk to me about anything to do with my background, or the police brutality, or anything at all. I first saw the psychiatrist after 6 days and the only topic under discussion in this very short ward meeting was which drugs and which dose of drugs I was to have (HAVE) to take. And the only debate in that room, a debate which did not include me, was the dose. Each week the dose went up. If I did not appear to be 'getting better' they just discussed changing the drugs.
And if I had shown signs of getting better, which I did after 1 March when I finally got hold of the last of my medical notes, from my GP, and I realised that all I had to do was to act, 'euthymic'. At this point they really began to start commenting on how well I was responding to 800mg of seroquel. So, my miraculous recovery was attributed to the correct drug dose.
The adult licensed dose for seroquel is 25-750mg. A dose of 800mg is only for extreme mania. I have never suffered from mania or displayed symptoms of mania. Quite the opposite. I spent almost all of my time locked in my room, with only staff coming in. (The staff would barge in without knocking whenever they wanted; another constant reminder of the lack of any privacy).
Point is, no talking therapy, no listening. The minute you are in that place you are in line to be put on powerful drugs. I would have thought that a custodial sentence should be the last resort and drugs should be the very last resort. I felt that when I was on those drugs I couldn't afford to appear 'better' in any way because they would have attributed my improvement to the drugs and I would have been forced to be on drugs forever, to prevent a relapse.
I planned to get out without any drugs, which took some very fancy footwork. Otherwise I would have ended up like Miranda with 'the recovery team' coming to my house twice a day to watch me take these drugs. Some of these drugs are very new and no-one really knows the side-effects yet. The patients in there were, as far as I could see, guinea-pigs.
Please remember that the catch-all word that can mean anything at all is paranoia. We were paranoid about being considered paranoid. My lawyer told me that one of the reasons I failed my appeal after to weeks was my opposition to taking drugs. This is why I must appear to be managing, no matter how hard I am finding it. Otherwise it will be back through the revolving door, back on the magic roundabout and next time it will be being pinned down and injected with God knows what in my bottom.
I don't think I can think as far as changing my name. Why should I be a fugitive in my own country? And I suspect I would be found out and that, of course, would be taken as yet another symptom of a mental illness.
The phrase that kept echo-ing in my head after the police brutality and incompetence was, 'This is not my country, this is not my country.' That is not the sort of language that I would use, either out loud or in my head. It sounds a bit Daily Mail to me, but that was my internal tourettes.
Almost all inmates in there were institutionalised very quickly. The new arrivals tended to wander round questionning why they were there until their drugs kicked in. No doctor or nurse ever considered ever giving 'no drugs' a chance. It runs on pharmaceuticals, lack of dignity and bloody jigsaws.