But I was soon referred to my, a support worker and he came round every week and talked to me. And she saw how I, she saw how I was getting on. And that helped a lot as well.

And what were they like?

Yes, they were good.

Was it a guy, woman?

A guy. I had different people come round to begin with, but I only saw them one time, and they were just talking about general stuff, do with what Psychosis, and, but I didn’t see them again tillI’m not sure. But the main guy I saw every week or two for about two or three years I think. He visited me at college as well.

And what types of things was he talking to you about?

He was just asking if I was getting better, really most of the time. Then I think I had some cogI can’t

Cognitive behavioural therapy?

Might have been that. Some woman came round.

CBT?

Yes. I had to write my, get my days back into normal routine and write down when I got up, what I was doing all day. In Ex… on the computer and that helped. It got me back into a normal routine.

And did you like the woman that came round?

Yes.

What did you like about her?

She was just easy to talk to and. Would listen to what I had to say. That’s about it really.

And what about this guy, this support worker that came round for two years. Why did you like him?

The same reasons really. And he gradually got me to go out more, because like he would drive me to the beach and stuff, and go for a walk, and…

And it was that time, I was still having problems with my Mum actually, because my hair was still long, and she couldn’t cope with that. So I said to my key worker at the time, Can you help me to get my own place So, the local housing for people with mental problems and they found me a flat in Battersea. So I moved in there, and I lived there for a while, and at that time, my key worker, who was my psychiatric nurse. Community psychiatric nurse. Used to come and give me my medication. And then what happened is, he said to me, Devon, I know you used to be a musician with some of these black guys didn’t you in the community before you got ill I said, Yes He said, I’m bringing you to a place in Balham, where some of these guys black guys, they’ve just left prison and I want you to start running some music sessions with them.

So he took me to this place, a hostel in Balham. I met the warden and then he said to me, Would you like to do some voluntary work here I said, I don’t mind So he said, I’ll introduce to some of the residents we have here So he took me up to this bedroom, and I could some of the black guys had pen knives. Flicking like this. They were bad guys and they were flicking like that, and looking at me that they would stab me with them. But I wasn’t afraid, because I used to that sort of ghetto, with that sort of attitude, you know.

Anyway, so they arranged for me to go to the local school and run a music session with them, and I used to come in of a morning, wake them up, tell them to go for breakfast. Sometimes I would take down to the Social Security to sort their benefits out and then after that we would come back to the hostel, and have something to eat. Then we go into the school and do some music workshop.

So I just kept working, but periodically I’d go into hospital and I’d have about six months off work. So it was very stressful keep becoming unwell, get better, keep becoming unwell, get better.

So it was really, really hard work and I now feel a lot more relaxed and people say that I am a lot more relaxed, but one of the reasons is, is that not that I was non compliant but sometimes you start to get high and you’d feel better and may be you weren’t as organised with your medication and things like that where now they bring it to my house, and they bring it to my house every three weeks in blister packs and the other thing is that is I’m monitored. Because she comes to my house, my CPN every three weeks, that means that, you know, whereas before with other times in [name of place] and [name of place] where it was very busy you had to go to them. If you became slightly unwell, you would end up missing appointments because you felt unwell, so you didn’t go. If I feel unwell at home, there’s a knock on the door, and I just open the door and there she is and just, How are you And I say, I’m not very well you know, and it’s a completely different set up. And that’s only from being in [name of place] where services are very good. So it really is a post card lottery as to where you live as to what standard of care you get. Which is quite amazingly different to be honest. And when I was unwell up here, they got the crisis team and they used to come out to me, including weekends, and they come out to me every day for at least a couple of weeks until I felt better to do without them.

And then I fell into a relationship with someone a lot younger than me and people said, You shouldn’t go out with her she’s got a history for violence And but I’d been on me own for about God knows who many years so I thought in for a penny in for a pound’ you know what it’s like at times, and at first everything was okay and then one Friday night she got extremely drunk and I realised that [laughs] it was the Friday again and for no reason she smashed a vase in me face and put fourteen stitches in me face and carved me body up like a draughts board, and that went to Crown Court, and [name] came with me, and we came out of court and she said to, How are you? I said, I’m glad it’s over [name] She said, I didn’t ask you that Pete, I said how are you I said, I’m alright And she said, How are your voices And I suddenly realised I hadn’t got any. She says, You’ve just turned the corner of your life, everybody reaches a major turning point and this is it for you. Any other time this amount of stress would put you back in hospital She said, You’ve got to build on it And I said, Well I don’t know what to do And she said, Well there’s a pub across road, we’re going to go in there and if we have to sit in there and get drunk we’re not leaving until you decide what you’re going to do So you can imagine I dragged that conversation out as long as I could. And eventually she encouraged me to start a Hearing Voices Group, I was reluctant at first, I’d been to one years before at Sheffield Mind and that had closed down and we started the group together and today we’ve now got eighty-five members and that was really the start of me turning point on recovery by getting more involved with services.

And what happened when you left the hospital?

Nothing much. I went back to university. What did I do? I was meant to see the doctor, so I would turn up to the doctor. And then I was meant to see a psychiatrist. And he was really weird. It was very strange. He must have been some arcane therapy, because I would go in and see him, and first of all we had a language barrier. We were from different cultures and he really didn’t understand much of my language. He had quite a poor grasp of English. So when I told him things he would get it wrong and I was quite inarticulate too, so it didn’t help him either. But he specialised in silence [laughs]. It was really weird. You’d go in and he’d say, How are you And I’d say, Fine And then he’d say, Yes And I’d sit there and he’d sit there and after about ten minutes he said, well, I’d be about ready to speak after ten minutes because it was really getting very painful by then. And then he’d say, Well that’s fine, I’ll see you in two weeks time And off I’d go again. So eventually I stopped going to see him, and then they sent someone down to make me come back to see him, but eventually I stopped seeing him. I carried on seeing the first doctor who was, who was good. He got very frustrated with me sometimes. You know, he would say, at that stage I had a personality disorder according to them and he would, he would do things, like saying he won’t see me if I carry on cutting myself and that would be really hard. And then if I phoned Nightlines or things like that when I was feeling suicidal they would phone the doctors because they would get worried and then he’d tell me off for doing it. But then after times he would say he could see me living in a rosy cottage in the future with children. And that seemed so unbelievable I would just laugh inside. But you know, eventually I did end up living like that for a time. And it was very good. And sometimes he would say I had to accept that life for me would always be miserable, because it would never be light and I had to get used to it, and that didn’t help. I think he was just frustrated. Because at other times he’d say, You know, it can be good But always when he left you, you’d just feel dejected. You’d sort of walk along with your heart on the floor saying, Why should I go and see him Even though he was trying to help he didn’t really know what to do. And may be there wasn’t anything to do.

You see we talk about institutionalisation as if it’s part of being in the hospital but I think institutionalisation in the community is as big an issue I think I, you know, I think when we move from hospital-based care to community-based care, what we did is we created trans-institutionalisation where we transferred the institution to the community and that is still as bad an institution as the thing, and, and, and the thing a, the biggest thing about that is we moved loads of staff out of the institutions and put them into the community, without trying to work on any change programme with them, so you can take the staff out of the institution but could you take the institution out of the staff? Which would have been a question that should have been asked in the Eighties, you know, it never was asked so it was probably too late. and I think this trans-institutionalisation means that people for instance will stay on community nurse’s books for years and they don’t need it. But it’s almost like a community, I’ve met Psychiatric Nurses and other people that have fifty-five on the caseload, but when you actually go and work through their caseload with them there’s twelve active you know, and the rest they, they’re are either doing a Depot or phoning once a month to make sure they’re okay but they’re on their caseload so they don’t get any more work. And rightly so because I think you can work with much more than twelve active anyway but surely we should be able to discharge them you know, and get them off caseload and say, These are the, these people are no longer on the, in the system You know? so I, I guess for me that the hardest part about this going back and forward was breaking that institutional thinking in my own head. That I, because you’re socialised into being a patient, you know the system creates more than just the diagnosis it creates this, patient that’s a patient whether they’re in hospital or out of hospital, like most people when they go to Out-patients don’t consider themselves patients you know? they’re going to get normally get discharged you know, there’s, it’s a follow-up after an operation they’re going to get discharged, don’t think to yourself, you don’t think I am a heart patient’ you know, whereas in Psychiatry you know? And they need that illness because that’s reflects for them then who they think they are. Yeah. For me it’s about moving beyond that, thinking I, this is not who I am, this is who I am, I’m all these different parts, you know, I’m the four faces of men or man’ or whatever, however you want to describe it.

And can you describe to me the kind of relationships have you had with [son’s] social workers?

[Son’s] some of them have been absolutely excellent. And some of them have been absolutely dire.

There was one in particular who I rang up crying, and she said, Oh I didn’t know you wanted tea and sympathy And I said, Actually, that’s exactly what I do need, tea and sympathy And she was one that made me feel that made me feel as if I was just dealing with something very, very trivial and not a severe and enduring mental illness. And I can remember thinking, you know, if only you could come and live in my house for a few weeks, and cope with what we have to cope with, you would not adopt that same attitude. The best practitioners are ones that treat the whole family. Involve the whole family, and don’t you know, see it as I’m on my high horse, I’m the professional and you’re just a low down carer. That’s not what it’s all about.