Thinking Differently

Thoughts in Mental Health Awareness Week 9-15 May 2022

Fear of the unknown

When I was in my teens I was afraid. Unnerved by what and who I did not know, and unsettled by media’s reflex association between mental illness and violence (which still persists in the lazy tabloids). In my ignorance these feelings were compounded by the bruises and scare-stories my parents brought home with them from working at a mental hospital. In the 1960s and 1970s, admission to the Isle of Wight’s “asylum” seemed to mean incarceration and neglect rather than recuperation.

It was an era of locked wards, restraints, routine electro-convulsive “therapy” and padded cells. The talk of being “sectioned” and disappeared into the dreaded Whitecroft (now a very up-market housing development) was to be “under the clock”, the local phrase heard in hushed tones with knowing looks. My occasional visits to this place of unspoken terrors left me with a dread of those long corridors which echoed with muffled shouts from who-knew-where. There were staff Christmas parties there which left me with a churning sense of unease , while hardly ever having actually encountered a patient!

Late learner

Little did I know (and I knew next to nothing) that both my mother and I had our own mental health issues. Despite her own repressed grief and anger, she had doggedly and a little bitterly forged on with life, when things fell apart for our family. Muddling through and not explaining seemed to be the order of the day. I however bottled it all up, storing up depression and social anxiety which only got a name many years later, after leaving a trail of damage in my own and others’ lives around me.

My own awareness of mental health and some growth in understanding of other peoples’ minds came with some painful self-discovery, when some family secrets were revealed. Treatment for depression and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to manage my anxieties have been transformative. More recently, training as a Mental Health First Aider (MHFA) for my former workplace has developed my sensitivity (and confidence) to stand with other people. It has given me a framework for my previously ill-informed empathy. I strongly recommend as many as can to consider the MHFA training so that we can all grow in self-understanding and look out for one another.

On the bookshelf

I cannot underestimate the role that certain books played in shaping my more sympathetic understanding of how other people’s minds work, as well as of my own. In 1984 Professor John Searle gave his Reith lectures Minds, Brains and Science which gripped me: I studied the transcripts in the now (sadly) defunct The Listener magazine – I may even still have them somewhere? – and debated the ideas with some clever friends. In retrospect I can detect the first unpickings of my religious faith in those talks.

And then came Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, first heard again as book of the week on BBC Radio 4. As I have often said, his neurological case studies could so easily have become a grotesque “freak show”, such were the extraordinary conditions he was able to describe. Yet this book was written with such a warmth and humanity towards his unfortunate patients that this is no sideshow, but a mind-expanding exploration of how the mind (the brain) is so much more complex than we are normally aware of, as evidenced by the florid ways in which things can go awry. His case studies are presented with humanity, humour and the willingness to step into someone else’s bewildering world. Learning how each has adapted and learned to live with a different experience of reality. I then searched out everything Sacks wrote and devoured it all, experiencing as I did so my own ignorance and lack of feeling for others fall away. With each of An Anthropologist on Mars, or Awakenings or his early book Migraine, I felt myself grow a little as a human being.

The Air Loom Gang is an astonishing historical account and a lesson for our times of how those with paranoid delusions are able to make sense of their experience of the world by projecting onto the imagined terrors of cutting edge technology. The manifestations of mental disorder are often shaped by the culture around us (a story also explored in Sleeping Beauties by Suzanna O’Sullivan). This story and Mike Jay’s wider research shine a light on the wild conspiracy theories of our time: whether it is 5G phone masts blamed for Covid or anti-vaxxers believing that governments are trying to control us through microchips. As always, our brains are just doing their best trying to tell us a story of how the world works, when the reality of chaos and uncertainty is too hard to bear.

Inconvenient People tells the story of how the English hid away those they didn’t care to live with, how some people were motivated by money to allow them to do it, and whose vested interests hindered the brave campaigners and reformers who fought to treat the mentally ill with decency and respect. There are distressing tales in this book – vulnerable individuals subjected to unspeakable abuse and exploitation. But there are inspiring and uplifting accounts of those who battle against the obstacles that society and culture put in their way. It reveals unlikely heroes and surprising villains, including some well known social reformers (Lord Shaftesbury!) who – on the subject of caring for the mentally sick – obstructed much needed change for the better.

NeuroTribes charts the story of a diagnosis and the ever-morphing characterisation of people on the autistic spectrum. It reveals how their families were stigmatised, mothers blamed, their need for support overlooked and how those “on the spectrum” themselves have had to forge an identity amongst us, the poorly-informed and unsympathetic neuro-typical majority. I was also full of admiration for Camilla Pang’s brilliant insider’s account (Explaining Humans) of what strength and tenacity a person needs to overcome life’s obstacles in the face of bewildering and unwelcoming modern life. She is an example of what talent can be unleashed when non-neuro-typical individuals are able to realise their full potential.

Books

• The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks (1985, Picador)
• An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales by Oliver Sacks (1995, Picador)
• Awakenings by Oliver Sacks (1973 / 1991, Picador)
• Migraine by Oliver Sacks (1970; Revised & Expanded Edition 1992, Picador)
• The Air Loom Gang: the Strange and True Story of James Tilly Matthews, his Visionary Madness and his Confinement in Bedlam by Mike Jay (2003, Bantam)
• The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness by Suzanna O’Sullivan (2021, Picador) – see Book Review – The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness – Welcome (grandpops-bookshelf.co.uk)
• Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England by Sarah Wise (2013, Vintage)
• NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and How to Think Smarter about People Who Think Differently by Steve Silberman (2015, Allen & Unwin)
• Explaining Humans: What Science Can Teach Us about Life, Love and Relationships by Camilla Pang (2020, Viking / Penguin) – see Book Review – Neurodivergence, a view from within – Welcome (grandpops-bookshelf.co.uk)

Links

• Mental Health Awareness Week | Mental Health Foundation (Mental Health Awareness Week on the theme of loneliness)
• Every Mind Matters – NHS (www.nhs.uk) (support for looking after yerself)
• BBC Radio 4 – The Reith Lectures, John Searle – Minds, Brains and Science, A Froth on Reality (broadcast in 1984, this piqued my interest in both Artificial Intelligence and the study of the most amazing objects in the Universe: our own self-aware brains)
• Mental health training online and face to face  · MHFA England (highly recommended – it has become notoriously hard to access mental health services in the UK, so why not be part of the solution?)