Thread by @tamar_whyte

1/ VIOLENCE IN INPATIENT FACILITIES: I keep thinking about when I was last in a psych ward. I almost sucker punched a staff member. They’ll never know. I’ll be forever haunted by it because it would have been an auto-response I’d had no control over but could have got in a shit >

2/ ton of trouble over & badly hurt someone to boot. Remember that when in an inpatient facility the power levels are very imbalanced so my explanation would likely not have been seen as a ‘sane’ explanation or believed. I’d have been pinned down & had several staff on my tail >

3/ 24/7 after that, plus an addition to my notes of being a violent patient. Here’s the context: Anyone who has been in one knows how hard it is to sleep. Rubber sheets in summer & a hard mattress leave you waking in a wet, uncomfortable mess. People in distress & loud wards >

4/ add to the torture of sleep deprivation. Your own distress, & speeding intrusive thoughts are a curse but sometimes a blessing when you are so worn out you finally sleep. This is where is was at. Then for some reason, some dickhead with a torch shines a light in my face >

5/ in addition to flicking on the switch to my bedroom light. This bright spark made the move across from working as a prison staffer to a mental health ward. There was some perverse pleasure in the way she was doing her 2h obs. The problem is, when you are woken in shock like >

6/ that, incredibly sleep deprived already and in some weird sleep stage mid-dream cycle, your auto-response is not quite what it would be if you were fully awake. The shock of the light in my face had me startled and about to throw the hardest, no holds barred punch I could. >

7/ Even tiny people do a huge amount of damage when fight mode kicks in and there is no filter that stops anything. I’m not tiny. God knows what damage would have been inflicted. All I can say is I’m so glad that I somehow hit the fully awake stage and was able to hit the ‘stop’>

8/ button on the nuclear auto-response. “What the f*** are you doing???” was the expletive laden mix of anger and relief she’d never understand was me thanking the universe she hadn’t been Muhammad Ali’d across the room by hypnagogic me. Who the f* trains & recruits these ppl? >

9/ Anyway, my point is this: if you have a ‘hospital ward’ that is set out like a prison ward and staffed like a prison ward, don’t be acting all surprised when the patients start acting like prisoners. Why aren’t our beds and treatment like people in physical health wards? >

10/ This was in a Priory Hospital. Since Priory Hospitals are celebrated for hosting celebrities and helping them navigate their mental health, you cannot tell me that this treatment would fly at their private facilities. There is no excuse for this. This is one issue with >

11/ violence. Patients are unwell and their symptoms are exacerbated rather than de-escalated. Sleep deprivation is a torture technique that LITERALLY DRIVES YOU MAD, not a therapeutic one. The other issue is more sinister than this, and it is the fact that there is such a power>

12/ imbalance. It’s all very well me sharing this as an amusing anecdote on social media right now, but the difference is that I’m in a much safer position to do so. When I was there, if waking up had happened a micro-second later and that dream punch had become reality, what >

13/ would have happened? An injured member of staff, alarms going off waking everyone on the ward, me, dazed, confused and restrained on the floor of my room. Then being confined to that room with staff at the door. Would any conversations with me afterwards have been listened >

14/ to, or would I have been the violent service user who had punched a staff member just doing their job & undertaking their 2h obs? When you are in a MH facility, the same things that you say and are paid for as a skilled, experienced & qualified consultant are derided as >

15/ being the words of a crazy person who causes trouble. It is hard enough for #LXP staff challenging this in the workplace but as a service user whilst inside the power disparity is insurmountable.

Thank f* I woke up in time, is all I can say.

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