Category: Psychosis

An interesting article about asylums and overlooked friendships.

Friern Barnet from wikipedia.
Friern Barnet from wikipedia commons.

In this short article introducing her forthcoming book: The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in our Times, Barbara Taylor describes her experiences of living in Friern Barnet mental asylum.   If the article is any indication, the book should be fascinating.  The piece focusses on the friendships developed in psychiatric wards, something that Taylor feels has been totally neglected by researchers.  As Taylor describes:

Magda suffered terribly from black depression yet nearly always she would pull herself together to be with me. Usually I did the same for her. The obligations of friendship trumped madness – and this in itself could be a form of healing.

it may be that the friendships developed on psychiatric wards can be an essential part of patients’ recoveries.  Yet as mental health professionals we often seem confused as to whether to encourage such relationships, and indeed are sometimes very ambivalent.  We may often fail to capitalise on the potential healing ability of our patients’ relationships.  To my knowledge, we know little about whether these relationships are sustained out of hospital and what they mean to our clients.   Yet we know that having good social support is a key factor that mediates recovery (for instance in bipolar disorder), and we know that serious mental illness commonly wreaks havoc on a person’s social networks (e.g. this study looking at the impact of psychosis on social support), so we really should know…

 

 

Youtube Channel Review: Time to Change

Type: YouTube Channel: Time to Change
Highly Recommended Resource.

Time to Change is a campaign which sets out to end mental health stigma.   That’s a tough, but laudable goal (especially tough given the continuing level of irresponsible reporting by media such as the Sun newspaper) .

The campaign started in 2007 and is supported by the mental health charities Mind and Rethink.  In terms of online resources, Time to Change has both a webpage and a YouTube channel.   More broadly, Time to Change seeks to engage the general public through all forms of media, whether it be TV, radio, internet, magazines or poster campaigns.  I’m going to briefly discuss the YouTube channel today.

In short, it’s a brilliant resource.  Useful to everyone from mental health service users, through to teachers, families and indeed anyone who wants to know wants to understand more about mental health difficulties, be it their own or other peoples’.

The videos cover a large range of formats/styles and topics.   To take just a few examples:

  • Animations such as the one above, beautifully illustrating a young person’s experience of depression and recovery.
  • A mock horror film trailor, ‘Schizo’, which seeks to undermine traditional associations between mental health and violence).
  • Short, poignant and powerful mini-dramas, such as ‘The Stand Up Kid’, which explores the unseen impact of stigma in schools.
  • A silent film, ‘The 5th Date… time to talk’, complete with speech bubbles, which considers the sometimes scary experience of disclosing one’s mental health diagnosis to a date.
  • Endorsements and discussions from famous people who have been open about their difficulties such as Stephen Fry and Frank Bruno (who discusses mental health with his daughter, Rachel Bruno) .

Many of the videos are sorted into particular topics, for instance there is a section with five videos, all of which feature a different person’s experience of mental health and the workplace.  In total there are over 80 videos, and so far, every one that I’ve watched is excellent.   I’m going to try and work my way through the other videos,  there’s a lot of them, but they are generally very short, and all inspirational, so not a chore.

 

Video resource: 5 young people’s experiences of mental illness.

Publisher:  Time to change.
Type:  Short Videos Collection

This very brief video (3.25) includes the experiences of 5 young people.   It’s short and concise and thus does not provide much detailed information.  However, each of the young people in this video are featured in their own longer videos, where they discuss their experiences in more detail.  This video thus provides a great opener for for any discussion about mental illness, especially with young people.   The related videos then provide additional material for further, more specific discussion.

These are just some of over 80 videos provided by ‘Time to Change’ on YouTube.   I’ve also provided a brief review of the channel here.

 

 

Youtube Channel Review: Rawsammi

Youtube Channel Review: Rawsammi
Highly Recommended Resource.
Main topic: Bipolar.

This is a great and brave resource.  Rawsammi (her user name) is a mid-twenties US American lady,  who has a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.  She’s posted dozens of videos, that cover everything from her experience of hospital, through to hyper-sexuality, the DSM-V and ‘taking responsibility’.  Rawsammi’s videos are delivered somewhat as a stream of consciousness, rather than being focussed and concise, but each video that I’ve watched contains useful information, emotion and humour.  The videos talking about her experience of hospital and the run up to hospitalisation are extremely open and honest, and I think could be extremely valuable to others who have had similar experiences.

It would take hours to go through all the videos and I don’t have time to review them all, anyone who wants to add their thoughts on any of the specific videos is more than welcome to comment below.

Youtube video review.

Media Brief Review.
Brief Video (5.26)
Topic: psychosis
Produced: by Surrey and Borders NHS trust

This is a short video about early intervention in psychosis from the Surrey and Borders NHS trust.  The video attempts to show one person’s experience of psychosis.  The lady involved provides personal information and is honest and open about her experiences of psychosis and of UK mental health services.   Unfortunately, the structure of the video and the production are not very good..  Nevertheless, it could still be a useful resource.  The participant is non-white (black, no further information), and thus her testimony may be helpful to those of similar background.