Warts and all

Mental health providers love hearing positive stories about how someone has struggled with their mental health, recovered, and will for ever be thankful for the wonderful help they received from caring staff. Some meetings start with a story others end with one. This is supposed to be ‘motivational’ for the staff, and good public relations too.

What I learned over my career as an NHS psychiatrist, with my own lived experience of mental illness – recurrent depression – is that there are some things that staff and dignitaries attending such meetings do not want to hear about. 

• Those who experience mental illness are just like them. People with families, life problems, aspirations and hopes. They are not a different breed. They need and want to be heard. It is their human right. 
• What they say can be challenging and upsetting. But it’s their lives. Their experience. Their truth.
• Some experience very good care, and are treated by staff as fellow human beings, but others are not. I’ve heard too many awful tales of disrespect, unwillingness to listen, lack of empathy and even abusive behaviour from staff, over the last 50 years to know that these stories are not exceptional.
• Complaining is hard. Too many people have told me how this can mean they get treated differently. Then they get told off for not making formal complaints! Is that surprising?
• ‘Recovery’ is complicated and personal, but it’s been co-opted by mental health care as the only outcome (Recovery in the Bin called this ‘Neorecovery’). Some of us need long term support and help, as I did for my mental health, and don’t get it. I once got told off for using the words ‘chronic illness,’ at a meeting. I have a couple. ‘We only talk of recovery here.’
• Sharing your lived experience can be difficult and leave you feeling vulnerable. It needs to be clear for what purpose you are being asked to do it. Our trauma should not be used performatively. Sharing it leaves us fragile and we need support and care.
• We want to build longer term relationships with therapists but sometimes find that hard, or the option isn’t available. We don’t want to see different people all the time who just ask the same questions. 

So, those who run mental health care need to hear stories of lived experience. Warts and all.

Those who just want positive stories and self-congratulation are missing the point entirely.