First week in Mental Health

So I have completed my 3 days at the mental health day centre.

I’m not sure what I thought – had so many mixed feelings. I loved the experience in many ways – it was a real eye opener for me, insightful, thought – provoking..

I wasn’t sure what I thought about the concept of the day centre. I kept thinking, is this helping? Is this any way to rehabilitate? This doesn’t fit in the ideal of social inclusion. But then, does it entirely matter? Is the idea of a safe haven, somewhere to be accepted and to meet others you get along with, a bad thing? This is my first experience in a mental health setting of any kind, so I have very little reference.

The structure is mainly that it’s a place to socialise and talk to other guests and volunteers while sessions are run, mainly by guests upstairs i.e art, poetry etc and then there are some speakers who come in – i.e we had an “ask the GP” session and a guests meeting where they could give feedback about the centre, chaired by another guest. And they got a 3 course meal for £2 which they all cited as one of their favourite aspects of the centre.

In addition there was quite a badly run session, where the commissioners from the LA came to try to find out what the guests liked about their service so they could use that feedback to write a proposal for the tender process…because of the cuts. However, this day centre will actually be affected very little by the cuts as it’s mainly funded by donors not the state. This wasn’t explained well enough to the guests so it just created huge fear and uncertainty as to whether the centre was going to be shut down.

I met great people. Both guests and volunteers. The guests were so generous – after 3 days I came away with a list of books recommended by one guest about sociology that would be good for my MA, a poem to thank me for my time there, a list of classical music that would make a great mix tape and a short story. I had great conversations about philosophy and sociology – one guest asked me what I did my dissertation on, and when I mentioned Platos’ Republic, it turned out he had it in his bag….another Oxbridge educated guest brought in the poetry he’d been writing to share. For most people reading this, none of this would be particularly surprising, but not really knowing what to expect, it was all quite a learning experience.

On the most part, people seemed happy. But there were definitely some people who stuck in my mind in terms of their sadness and vulnerability. People you couldn’t engage with beyond a few sentences – and I was always left wondering can these people get better? And how?

I learnt a huge amount from some incredible volunteers. One had been an OT for 15 years and told me about the different types of mental illness – neurotic and psychotic and some of the differences. Another actually changed career from business to social services age 47 and now decades later is still volunteering in this day centre which she herself founded. She’d been a guest at the House of Lords and lobbied outside parliament – very inspiring.

Anyway, I took a huge amount out of it from just 3 days.. a great first week out of advertising.

Possibly my biggest and perhaps most amusing faux pas…we were having a bit of a sing along to Sound of Music and one of the guests said “let me turn off the music and you can do a solo..” and I said “ Are you mad?!”…