I Found Friendship in a Psychiatric Ward

People on psychiatric wards are more capable of caring than we think

My admission to Old St Mary’s Hospital in Scarborough, 1998 was the most painful admission I had been through. I had no friends and family around me at the time, and I was homeless after escaping yet another traumatic and scary event.

I had also lost everything to the repeated trauma I had been through at the time, my young ones, my home, and my belongings. I spent so many months on the streets afraid and brutally tormented and I was extremely vulnerable and unable to let anyone get close to me.

When I was first admitted, I was not in a good place, and I was severely traumatized to a point where I couldn’t remember who I was.

I spent many long weeks hiding, scared to interact with any of the patients or staff there. I simply kept myself in my dorm or curled up in a ball in a corner.

The patients always tried smiling and saying hello. Each and every one of them had their own mental health problems, however, on the rare occasion they saw me, they never stopped trying to encourage me to talk with them or ask if I was ok. They saw I was terrified, and they were deeply saddened by that.

The other patients knew what it was like to be a shadow in that lonely and hopeless place and they picked up on my fear.

There were times they would struggle to get any real conversation out of me because I was so afraid to talk, and the fear of talking caused me to have some severe stammer issues, as I often slipped back into flashbacks from my past. To begin with, they couldn’t even get me to say hello, but they never ignored me, and they always tried to help me join them in conversation.

They didn’t give up on me.

When society thinks of a psychiatric ward, they paint a picture of patients being extremely violent, crazy, unfeeling, or out of their minds.

This is stigmatizing and I know from my own experiences of being afraid of violence during my stay on the ward that this is a misunderstanding of mental health. There were some occasions when a patient would act out violently, however, we must understand that this is to do with their mental health condition and not the patients themselves. Of course, there are some mental health problems that can cause severe violence, but this is not the norm for all.

These patients were warm, friendly, and caring.

Eventually, I learned through observing them, that I was safe and that it was ok to talk to them. In fact, I met my husband of 20+ years when he was a patient on the same ward as me.

These patients were far from the stigmatizing picture that society had painted of them, despite having their own insecurities. They knew I had no money to buy things I needed to care for myself, and in truthfulness, they were more caring than most of the staff there who ignored me most of the time. They helped me out by handing me little things like soap, shampoo, and one female patient named Sandra, who I became close to and has now sadly passed away, even gave me a spare dressing gown to sleep in as she noticed that I had no clothes.

I still have that dressing gown today as it is a comfort to me, and reminds me of my dear friend who was the first person to talk to me there despite her own mental health problems.

The friendship of these amazing people enabled me to heal and care again.

I learned that not everyone was going to hurt me, how to laugh, love, and make friends again. I became a popular friend myself to the patients there once they had brought me out of my shell, and these patients always told me that I brightened their day with my kind heart and talkative personality which came out over time. It took time to allow my full personality to show because I was afraid to show it after being hurt by what seemed a never-ending cycle of violence and abuse. However, the man I met there who fell in love with me noticed that when I was around, everyone smiled. He even described me as ‘infectious’ and so did every patient on that ward.

The patients understood when I needed time to breathe, maybe because sometimes they needed time to breathe too.

Despite being very ill like myself, they always had time for conversation and they were very patient with my stammering and fear. I know my flashbacks scared them at times, but even then they never hesitated to make me a drink or ask if I was ok, whereas staff often acted as if nothing had happened.

I have to add to this article that my husband Jonathan Townend was amazingly kind to me in those days together on the ward. I married Jonathan a year after we left the ward together. He accepted that my trauma caused me to have a fear of men and women who tried to get close to me, yet he still supported me with my very difficult problems even though he was faced with much loss and difficulties himself.

He took me exactly as I was, and never gave up on me, despite the fact that I could be difficult to understand and get close to sometimes.

He encouraged me to finally get out and about with him, and we became personally close to each other, not just because of mental health, but also through love. The staff and the patients soon became aware of the confidence and light that Jonathan brought out of me, and they all cheered when we erupted in a kissing session in that hospital. The ward manager saw the good impact Jonathan had on me, and she allowed us to leave the hospital together. She was also really happy for us to move in together and that worked out really well, despite the trauma that followed some years later after a local authority re-triggered a severe relationship trauma that in return triggered a severe PTSD response causing me to relapse and caused many difficulties in my marriage along the way. Despite those difficulties, however, we have only grown stronger and closer together in ways nobody thought we would.

Sadly, we all went separate ways after that admission in 1998, but the memories of those caring friendships will stay with us forever.

I would like people to look inside their own hearts when they think about mental health and patients admitted to a psychiatric ward. Are you stigmatizing their mental health by labelling them as a criminal for behavior you do not understand? Can you see the difference between someone who has a mental health problem and someone who is behaving in purposeful criminal ways? If you were in their shoes, would you like to be judged in the way you judge them?

I spent a long time suffering from mental health stigma when my own mental health problems were at their worst. People looked down on me not just as a person but as a parent, which in return also hurt my children.

Please think before you judge a book by its cover.