Day 816

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Health and social care, care of the elderly, care homes, care in the community, child care, nursing care, residential care, respite care … The word ‘care’ is used everywhere but what does it mean?

The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as ‘the process of protecting someone or something and providing what that person or thing needs’ and ‘serious attention, especially to the details of a situation or thing’.

Synonyms: caution, attentiveness, alertness, vigilance, observance, responsibility, forethought, mindfulness, regard.

Medicine and nursing are caring vocations. Yet, they are jobs like any other. They pay a salary for a service rendered. The care element can potentially become optional as long as all the boxes are ticked.

‘Continuity of care’ is particularly tricky in mental health as relationships are based on trust and every time a new person takes over a caring role, all the facts need to be repeated and trust re-established, starting from scratch.

Now that I belong to a network of mothers and fathers who have lost their children to suicide, one common theme emerges: “It seems that our sons and daughters didn’t need more resources, more GP’s or more psychiatrists or more nurses. They just needed more care…”

Let’s not use the word carelessly.

Day 815

Posted by kidsaregifts20

(A sculpture by Ruth M, who lived with Bipolar Disorder, expressing her depression)

In the 1940s, mental hospitals were places of isolation and confinement, probably closer to prison than hospital. Netherne, in Surrey was seen as a progressive asylum at the forefront of waves of reform and development for nearly 50 years, till the eventual closure of the British asylums. They enthusiastically adopted physical treatments, now viewed as barbaric- insulin coma therapy, electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy, then seen as optimistic approaches to treatment.

Edward Adamson (1911-1996) was a pioneer of British Art Therapy. He encouraged and collected the paintings, drawings and sculptures by people compelled to live in Netherne Hospital between 1946 and 1981. He describes that many people who came to his first lecture there had shaved or bandaged heads, bruised faces and black eyes, following brain surgery.

Adamson started collecting art during his early visits when a man on a locked ward gave him the first of his several drawings done on toilet paper with a charred matchstick. He later met other people on the wards who would have had no personal possessions, working with whatever materials they could find to create something for themselves.

The Adamson Collection has 6,000 of these works of an estimated 100,000 when he retired. The collection is seen as unique in the history of art therapy of the reforming psychiatry of the 1950s and 60s, collected by an artist rather than a psychiatrist, with a strong representation of works by women. Above all it is a memorial to all those who suffered in the asylums and to the human need to express.

“Edward Adamson practiced art as healing before there were ever terms or labels like ‘Art Therapist’. Being with him for anyone was therapy and yet he didn’t play at clinician, but rather served so sweetly as a supreme friend, ‘there’ for those who had none other. There were for Edward no patients. I think that is why so many lost people in his care found their way back to themselves. Adamson’s was an alchemy of the highest sort.”

– Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, Founder/Director American Visionary Art Museum, 2011

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Ref: http://www.adamsoncollectiontrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/2-2011.-DOF-Raw-Vision-for-EAF.pdf

Day 813

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Short stories have always intrigued me. Of late my attention span has become so short that those are the only kind of stories I can relate with and appreciate.

Here’s an abridged version of ‘Grief’ by one of the greatest writers of short fiction, Anton Chekov.

‘Grief’

It is twilight. Large flakes of snow are falling. A cab-driver, Iona, waits for a customer. He sits in his cab with his body bent as double as a living body can, immobilized by misery. ‘To whom shall I tell my grief?’

At last an officer arrives. Iona sets off in his cab with the officer at the back. He turns around to speak to him.
“My son…er…my son died this week, Sir.”
‘Hm. What did he die of?’
“It was a fever.”
Silence. Iona turns around again to find the officer nodding off.

As the evening progresses, Iona attempts to talk to someone three times. He tries to tell the story of his son’s death again and again. The second passenger, a high browed businessman interrupts Iona and says, ”We all must die one day.” Another man simply gets out of the sleigh. Later Iona tries to speak with a house porter but he brusquely tells him to drive on. Still later Iona offers one of his fellow drivers a drink but the young man promptly falls asleep. Just as the young man has been thirsty for water, Iona thirsts for speech. There is so much he needs to share.

“One must tell it slowly and carefully; how his son fell ill, how he suffered, what he said before he died, how he died. One must describe every detail of the funeral and the journey to the hospital to fetch the defunct’s clothes. His daughter Anisya remained in the village – one must talk about her too. Was it nothing he had to tell? Surely the listener would gasp and sigh and sympathise with him?”

Finally at the end of the working day, Iona returns to the stables. He starts to speak to his horse, “Now let’s say you had a foal, you were that foal’s mother and suddenly, let’s say that foal went away and left you to live after him. It would be sad. Wouldn’t it?”

The mare munches hay and breathes on her master’s hands. She doesn’t close her eyes, nor walks away, nor interrupts with her own wisdom on the matter. And it’s enough. Iona tells her everything.

At the risk of repeating myself, I tell the story I need to tell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij8Mp_zOh7Y

(Special thanks to Diane Morrow and her book: One Year of Writing and Healing)

Day 809

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Recently I came face to face with my own subconscious biases. They came as a surprise but were interesting to watch once I became aware of them. I was faced with a series of people who were to be evaluated as objectively as possible by a colleague and I. They walked into the room and talked to us one by one. Some men, some women, some from abroad, some very well dressed, some with an accent, some with facial hair, some suave, some with a lot of hand movements, some hiding their nerves behind an overconfident exterior…

We made evaluations and discussed the interviewees. It was apparent that those who presented themselves well and appeared relaxed made a good impression. We reminded ourselves that even if someone spoke well, our focus must be on the content rather than the delivery. We picked up on body language clues like a mild trembling of the fingers and periodic clearing of the throat.

Couldn’t help thinking back. Saagar spoke well. He had an endearing and calm demeanor. He was clever. He was also a good mimic and actor. He could have easily made his assessors believe whatever he wanted them to, unless they were aware of their own biases and could read his non-verbal language – things that come with years of practice and experience!

Day 796

Posted by kidsaregifts20

Who said hard work won’t kill you?

They have a specific term for it in Japan – ‘Karoshi’.
It means death from overwork. One fifth of the workforce in Japan is at risk of it. 2000 people die of work related stress every year and many others due to heart attacks, strokes, suicides and other serious health problems, giving rise to resignations, law suits and calls to tackle the problem. Japanese salarymen work significantly longer hours than their counterparts in other modern economies.

Ichiro Oshima, a 24-year-old Dentsu (an advertising firm with a notorious reputation) employee, killed himself in 1991 in Japan’s first recognised case of karoshi-related suicide. Oshima had not had a day off for 17 months and was sleeping for less than two hours a night before his death.

The number of suicides and attempted suicides in the City of London (the financial district) has doubled in the first 8 months of this year, particularly from bridges. Could that have something to do with the brutally competitive atmosphere in the Square Mile? Officers are making more use of Section 136 of the Mental Health Act to take people to a place of safety, usually a hospital. Ambulances are often unavailable so officers resort to using police vans, almost criminalising people by transporting them thus. Invariably when patients are assessed they are not deemed to meet the threshold of admission to a mental hospital and released. Police are asking NHS Trusts to provide details of patients so they know if they have been released so that they can be put a plan in place to safeguard them.

City police have also set up a Bridges Working Group including officials from NHS mental health trusts, the Samaritans, the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institute) and the Coastguard.

Only a small percentage of employers in the UK have family-friendly policies or personal support services in place so as to achieve a good work-life balance. Although it is improving, we still have a long way to go.

Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/29/head-of-japans-top-ad-firm-to-quit-after-new-recruits-death-from-overwork?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Email

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/18/death-from-overwork-japans-karoshi-culture-blamed-young-mans-heart-failure

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/08/japan-one-fifth-of-employees-at-risk-of-death-from-overwork-report

https://www.rethink.org/living-with-mental-illness/police-courts-prison/section-136-police-taking-you-to-a-place-of-safety-from-a-public-place