The
town's old mental hospital...marked by a red brick tower, a landmark
still standing today even as the rest of it was ploughed under salted
earth to make way for a supposedly luxurious housing estate which
like every other such development in this town has ended up nothing
such.
I was
taken there by a next door neighbour for reasons I can't remember.
“Would you like to come to the mental hospital with me?” - I
can't imagine me saying yes to that as a 6 year old, nor my family
agreeing to this. I wonder what the circumstances were? Perhaps they
had a lasting effect, although I wasn't given ECT, I just sat in a
brown and cream canteen drinking orange squash.
Much
later...19? 20? I ended up visiting the mental health unit at the R D
and E Hospital in Exeter. I called it Bedlam...it was a massive
gothic building perched at the end of the site, entry through a huge
flight of stone steps up into a door you always feared might shut
behind you forever. Inside, as my brain erupted with obssesive
behaviours disruptive to life, all was bege officers with beige soft
armless chairs found only in mental health settings. Men wearing
sandals and socks talked to me about my dreams. And I helped them
fail to diagnose the obvious.
Hometown
mental health unit for outpatient maniacs. Now a hotel, when before
it was a maze of narrow staircases and staff who said things like
“'Shrooms” to appear down with the kids. I in my long sleeved
purple top wasn't even a drug user, although I was just starting to
self medicate rather badly.
The
counselling unit at my University deserves a mention, as I was in it
virtually every week for three years. It was falling down, and the
offices were tiny. I always dreaded seeing someone I knew there. When
I did, we manoevered around and around to pretend we weren't going in
there. He and I are now both writers, but he is a far more famous and
richer one than I.
The new
local unit. I've never been in it. Apparently the top job of any
staff member is to help the patients watch Jeremy Kyle all day. Have
we really progresses from the days of head cages and hosings down?
Copyright Bloody Mulberry 03.03.14
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