The Great and the Small

Trying to catch up on some blog reading, I came across an article today written by Bipolarmo on Mental Nurse, entitled Sleeping with the Enemy. It’s about the stigma surrounding mental health - in mental health. In the one place where you would expect to find understanding, some nurses clearly have a poor attitude towards those with mental health problems. It seems that on some wards, if one of the staff members suffers* from mental health problems they fail to gain respect from their co-workers and become something of a laughing stock. Such an attitude towards fellow workers with mental health issues is obviously a reflection of how they feel about people with mental health problems in general, and raises the very serious question of whether such ones should work in mental health.

I've seen this “them and us” attitude in nurses on the ward myself. They wrongly presume that they are immune to the possibility of ever having mental health problems of their own, and view themselves as superior to such “weakness”. As Bipolarmo so rightly points out, how is an attitude like that supposed to help break down the stigma surrounding mental health? Why do some nurses still have this archaic attitude? Did they get their training from cave walls? If mental health staff haven't realised by now that the patients are neither “stupid” nor “weak” then how can we expect the general public to understand?

I think that people who have experienced mental health difficulties themselves would undoubtedly make very good psychiatric nurses - certainly they would be very approachable. In my experience, people with mental health problems are often intelligent; sensitive to peoples needs; gifted, and deep thinkers. I can’t tell you how angry it makes me feel to know that some people who are trained to help these ones view them with such contempt. Do they view people with physical diseases this way? In reality, some of the patients on psychiatric wards are more intelligent and often more gifted than many of the nurses. Rather than looking at people with mental health problems with disdain, nursing staff should feel humbled realising that mental illness, like any other illness, knows no boundaries and can affect the small and the great alike.

You know, when Mr Man was first in hospital we both had such a traumatic time, both with coming to terms with his illness, and with coping with the attitudes of some of the staff. One day this girl smiled at me and started chatting. She asked me how Mr Man was doing, and then asked how I was coping. I was shocked because Mr Man had already been on the ward for quite a while and she was the first person to ask me that. Do you know who she was? She was a patient who had just been moved to the Acute ward from ICU. She went on to tell me that when she is well again she wants to work in mental health. I sincerely hope that she has achieved her goal.

*I use the term “suffers” meaning someone who has previously suffered, or someone with a diagnosis of mental illness which is obviously under control, allowing them to function as well as any other individual who may occasionally have recurring problems with a physical condition, such as a back problem.