Obiter Dicta

Wednesday, May 30^th.

Back again. After about a month – and with no real reason for the absence, other than being away in Oxford for the first week and then having tons of writing to do when I got back. But it’s no like real work, as the guys in the pub never fail to remind me.

            I went to Oxford at the beginning of May, at the invitation of the University Union’s ‘Mind Your Head’ campaign, which aims to get people talking and thinking about mental health issues. Their website acknowledges that, even in a place so devoted to the mind and its potential, mental illness is poorly understood. I support their campaign wholeheartedly. Mental illness is still, today, too little discussed, and too often hidden away as a sorry secret that people would rather no-one knew about.

            It was my first time in the city where spires dream and cars are not welcome. Oh, are they ever not welcome! There are huge signs as you approach the place recommending you to Park and Ride. Well, more than recommending, actually. Exhorting you. Urging you. I wouldn’t be surprised if I go back next year and find there’s a checkpoint Charlie with soldiers and a spike strip, and some CSM type roaring into your rolled down window, “Right, you horrible little man! Park the car and get on the bus from here.”

            They don’t quite do that at the moment but it can’t be far off. As it was, I drove into the city centre, among the ancient colleges and historic architecture and parked in an underground car park that only (only!) cost me £13 for five hours parking. A snip, man; a snip.

            But the city was worth the money. You can’t get into the colleges too readily these days unless you pay, or are there at the invitation of a don or something, so I didn’t see the rooms or dine in hall. Still, the place is beautiful; of that there is no doubt.

            I was speaking in Blackwell’s Bookshop on Broad Street, a grand shop with some rooms that stretch back under the grounds of Trinity College. Obviously, I referred at several places in my talk to ‘The Locked Ward’, reading some passages that illustrated my points.

            In my childhood, there were two respectable families in my home town with members who suffered from psychiatric illness. But it was rarely mentioned outside of the family. Young as I was, it seemed to me that there was something shameful about this, not to say something sinister. It is just a fact that, no matter how intelligent or enlightened the family, in the 1950s and 60s,  mental illness was considered a stigma, a blot on the family escutcheon, a sorrow they had been given to bear.

 For example, a prominent figure in the town had four children: two daughters and two sons. The daughters went to university and became teachers. The second son, John, studied Law at Glasgow. The older son, James, was immured in the asylum for many years. I realise now, looking back, that he suffered from schizophrenia, and would be in a secure ward very like the one I describe in my memoir. When people met the family on the street, they would ask after the children. “Is John doing well at Glasgow? Very good. And the girls? You must be so proud of them.” But no-one enquired after James, and the family never referred to him in conversation with outsiders. I have no doubt they loved him and visited him. But, on the outside, it was as though John had died. He was a non-person.

            But mental illness is like anything else we hide away in the darkness and never discuss. If we lock something away from sight, in the attic or the cupboard under the stairs, the inevitable happens. In time, it grows horns. Then a spiky tail. Then it begins to breathe sulphur and scratch at the door. It becomes a demon and a bogeyman that we are then too terrified to contemplate. But we need to be open about these things. Demons and bogeymen are figments of the imagination. Reality is much more prosaic and less terrifying to deal with.

            I firmly believe that we must bring mental illness into the light. Let people see that it is an illness; not a spell or a curse. Psychiatric conditions, like physical ailments, can vary in severity, duration and frequency of occurrence. And they can be treated. As I have argued elsewhere, despite the many impressive advances in psychotropic medication over the years, the most effective resource in treating mental illness is the human touch: the caring, dedicated men and women who nurse us back to health. And that means family members and friends, as well as professionals. But we cannot fully utilise this resource so long as we hide mental illness away as something separate, or something to be ashamed of.

            Which is why I was delighted to participate in Oxford University’s ‘Mind Your Head’ campaign at the start of the merry month of May. The team are doing a sterling job of keeping mental health issues to the fore in a city where so many young people are working hard, with some degree of pressure, often far from home for the first time. I salute them.