Chapter 20 : Day Patientfrom Barbara Taylor ‘The Last Asylum’

Just before being admitted to Friern, she saw V then went to Dr D as a regular arrangement. Her first admission was, as was mine, for two weeks. Like Hellingly, there was a glass windowed partition for the ward round. She was confronted by a semi circle of professionals. RD Laing described this as a ‘ceremonial of control.’ She was in and out of Friern for 18 months. She was discharged to the day hospital, and Dr D refused to give any more individual sessions. Halliwick House at Friern was a therapeutic-community place. At the day hospital she did groups and sat in smoky rooms with plastic chairs and grungy carpets. She objected to nurses deciding her care, but V retorted that she was not democratic in this respect for a radical. She was told unlikely allegations of a rape by a young woman who had liver damage from an overdose. She avoided a journalist she knew. She wanted to live in a hostel due to open while living with friends. She was concerned by delays in moving to the hostel. She drinks again. Around Christmas she gets a look at the new hostel. She is worried that she will lose her room because she wants the boiler on at night to have a bath. The support worker at Circle 33 allows the boiler to stay on at night. She moves in and gets a new routine: hostel, analysis, day hospital, hostel. Two months into hostel life she has dealings with her old housemates over the value of her house share. She ended up in Friern again. This was her third admission. She travelled from Friern to West Hampstead. (?). After 5 months she is sent to Pine Street Day Centre in Finchley, quite a way away. She thinks: No recovery for her, just becoming a bloody lifer. It’s not a good building. Ancient sofas and threadbare rugs, pool table, small conservatory with mildew, small cubbyhole toilet. Machine for peeling potatoes. Six patients had been attending for years, but of 50 on the books there were only 20 showed up. Nigel was a quiet young man, someone’s beau, listening to his voices. At Pine Street the activity was group psychotherapy twice a week and small groups on other days. There was an artist Bobby Baker who did diary drawings of the place. There were theatre groups, woodwork classes, film and museum visits, and some who spent all their time smoking and hanging round the pool table. Just surviving took much of Barbara’s energy. Nick was the director who was white and male and the leader – a stereotype. Such men

have featured in the therapeutic-community scene from Maxwell Jones and Tom Main to anti-psychiatrists like R D Laing and David Cooper. Paddington Day Hospital was a seminal place. Staff and patients had prevented the closure of PDH and started the service user movement, but by 1976 there was dissonance and PDH was closed in 1979. Nick’s manner had been effective with some patients – tough love – but it didn’t work with Barbara. In 1990 someone said to her: You seem withdrawn. She replied: Just staying alive.