And what was life like for you in a county asylum?

Well I would have accepted life in a county asylum. I would have accepted living in a ten bed male dormitory with no privacy. I would have accepted packing soap or assembling valves in industrial therapy for £1.75, so I could buy tobacco and I would have accepted that, and I would have even accepted the disgusting National Health food and many people accepted that as a sort of a version of sort of living in some kind of military barracks. Perhaps people whod been around since World War II and National Service. You know, there were quite a lot of those people in 1974, because National Service only came to an end in 1962. So you had all the people who were still quite fit and young and active, and had their lives to lead. And they’d either been through World War II or been a National Serviceman. So kind of being a male dormitory and having menial tasks to do and that it was a bit like being in the army possibly. So there was that kind of element to it. I would have accepted that, but they did insist on giving me these horrendous injections which produced dreadful side effects, and that was sort of deal break for me. I was always trying to get myself discharged so that I could escape the side effects, the akathisia, the restlessness of the injections and that was the basis of my revolving door time. But I would have accepted life there. And many people over the years did find the asylums to be their home. And despite the privations and the conditions of life, where we had no privacy, you had to, you had to put up with communal resources all the time, your sheets and your clothes were all washed together with other people’s. And the general conditions of the asylums. And those people found it home.

I negotiated that I would have medication by tablet. I have been taking my tablets every day since 1991. In recent years, about the last ten years, I’ve been atypical medication. The one I have been on is something called olanzapine. it’s got even less sedative effects than the Largactil and Stelazine I was last discharged on. As far as I know, because I don’t have a lot of insight into my mental illness I haven’t been acting in a psychotic or paranoid way. I feel quite happy and content and I don’t have any unhelpful feelings that say, the Russians are coming’ or that the IRA are lurking around Kentish lanes, trying to do something against the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don’t feel there’s signalling going on, signalling go on to spy satellites or by Morse code or anything like that. I used to have those thoughts and they’re very unhelpful. I don’t have any of those thoughts today and I have had those kind of thoughts for nearly fifteen or twenty years. That’s due to the therapeutic effect of the tablets. Which I will accept. And as I say for the last ten years or so, I’ve been atypical medication and the one I’ve been prescribed is olanzapine. And I’ve got no objections to taking it. Each day is the same. You know, I mean I don’t have restlessness or extreme sedation.

One of the nurses reported that I hadn’t been taking my tablets, which I don’t know how they came to do that. So the psychiatrist called me in and said, There’s some doubt about you taking your tablets. We’re going to put you on injections And this chap who I can only describe as a [forensic hospital] trained teddy boy who insisted on being called Mr. He had his white coat on with green epaulets and so he was some kind of nurse. And he insisted on being called Mr. Mr B. I won’t say his full name. You call me Mr B, I’ll call you Raymond or Andrew or whatever I like And I’m going to give you this injection. If you don’t come with me and drop your trousers so I can give you the injection, I’m going to call the crash team out, who will hold you down and give you the injection And this coming from a [forensic hospital] trained teddy boy in an era in 1974 when I’d become associated with peace and love, and I’d sort of gone through the you know, sort of hippy if you like phase and I thought it was all peace and love and it’s all energy man and things like that. And you know, but to be confronted with a [forensic hospital] trained teddy boy, was pretty intimidating, especially when he could call on a crash team, to come out, if there’s a slightest sort of bit of doubt, and who would delight no doubt in dialling that number from the ward phone and getting the crash team, and holding you down and injecting you. So that’s what the staff were like.

But for me I was glad the asylums were closed down, and I’ve not been an inpatient since the asylums were closed down. And the last time I was an inpatient was in 1991 at [name of asylum] near [place] and I managed to negotiate with the medical staff there that I wouldn’t have medication by injection. I negotiated that I would have medication by tablet. I have been taking my tablets every day since 1991. In recent years, about the last ten years, I’ve been on atypical medication. The one I have been on is something called Olanzapine. It’s got even less sedative effects than the Largactil and Stelazine I was last discharged on. As far as I know, because I don’t have a lot of insight into my mental illness I haven’t been acting in a psychotic or paranoid way. I feel quite happy and content and I don’t have any unhelpful feelings that say, ‘the Russians are coming’ or that the ‘IRA are lurking around Kentish lanes, trying to do something against the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don’t feel there’s signalling going on, signalling go on to spy satellites or by Morse code or anything like that. I used to have those thoughts and they’re very unhelpful. I don’t have any of those thoughts today and I have had those kind of thoughts for nearly fifteen or twenty years. That’s due to the therapeutic effect of the tablets which I will accept. And as I say for the last ten years or so, I’ve been atypical medication and the one I’ve been prescribed is Olanzapine. And I’ve got no objections to taking it. Each day is the same. You know, I mean I don’t have restlessness or extreme sedation.

And when I was starting to waste my money on drugs. Which I think will be quite evident to people at the university, people in my hall of residence, people in my teaching department. I think they’d have known that you know, I was taking a lot of drugs. And also I wasn’t turning up for lectures. I wasn’t turning up for seminars even. At one point I think my programme in my second year at [place] University I had two engagements a week. I think that’s one lecture and one seminar. I didn’t even go to them. And when I did go, I felt very paranoid. I felt paranoid being on buses in the town centre. Because I’d been smoking drugs. I was given no support with the psychological effects of losing my leg and things and also I had a lot of pain, lack of mobility with my leg, and I could have turned for help.

I mean I’ve heard of people with artificial legs who are on a maintenance dose of morphine even you know. I mean I could have sort of had some sort of help. Instead I did it illegally and you know, drugs subculture. I got paranoid and I failed my finals that just decimated me you know

But I think there is such a thing that’s described under the name of schizophrenia. I think there are delusions, there are paranoia and they do happen and by abolishing the term schizophrenia you’re not going to abolish delusions and paranoia. People will have paranoia, they will have delusions and it’s helpful to have medication that will stop the delusions and it’s helpful to have talking therapies that will enable you to come to terms with delusions and to address the problem of your delusions [coughs]. That won’t happen for everyone I know. There are unfortunately people who have delusions and paranoia and that remains with them. They’re treatment resistant. And that’s very sad. And those people should be properly looked after and they should be given the best quality of life. But for quite a few people if they have the right medication, medication that they agree with. If they have a care plan that includes medication that they agree with them, that doesn’t give them horrendous side effects, that they’re not going to drop off taking, then they will benefit from having helpful therapy from medication and from talking therapies. And I think that there always will be schizophrenia. I think that studies show that about 1% of every population in every culture throughout the whole of mankind will suffer from schizophrenia. And that won’t go away by avoiding the term schizophrenia. I think it might be helpful to abolish the name schizophrenia and to replace it with something like perception disorder which I think is a term they’ve used in Holland and it would be helpful to abolish the term schizophrenia in the same way that manic depression has been abolished and mental subnormality has been abolished.

There was some talk about pre clinical diagnosis and that was mentioned on All in the Mind, in May or June 2010, and Claudia Hammond was quite right to include in her programme that day, and I think that, as I said early, I had a pre-disposition towards psychosis and schizophrenia, paranoia and things like that. I think I had a pre-disposition towards psychosis. And I had all these life events at the time, as I said I lost my leg when I was seventeen and a half, I failed my degree when I was 24. My parents got divorced when I was 23 or 24. And I smoked a lot of pot when I was about 22. All these things can be sort of pretty disastrous that anyone with a pre-disposition towards schizophrenia and so I think I followed a sort of typical pattern in those days.

And I’ve managed to pass a BA Honours with the Open University and I did an MA at Brighton University in 1998. I participated in service user committees which were the order of the day when community care was introduced. We had user involvement, and part of the user involvement scheme of things was that you would have a user charter for day centres or places where care took place and you would have an elected user committee with an elected chair person. I was chair person of the user committee at our day centre for a while. I found that very empowering. Those kind of the developments came along at the same time as I was doing a module for the Open University for my BA, and that module was called Democratic Government in Politics. So it was very helpful to do the module on Democratic Government in Politics, when issues like legitimacy, accountability, and those kind of the things were the order of the day when community care was first implemented. The 1990 Community Care Act, its full title was the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act. That legislated community care and that act was fully implemented from 1992 onwards. And we had user committees and we had a relationship with the management and with our carers that was different from the relationship in the asylums. We were more equal partners and the best managers and there were some of them round here, would say that they got their legitimacy, and they got, and their accountability from their relationship, their partnership with the user committees and this was all democratically done and it helped me to be doing democratic politics with the Open University, the same time that user committees and things were being established.