Guardian Article

I thought this was en excellent article. My family has experienced much the same through a loved one going through a crisis. How we care for the most vulnerable is a mark of our society. And the signs for the UK are not good. Thank you to both of you for the article. I found it helpful

I’m in the middle of reading The Shock of the Fall and have experienced the growing realisation that I know the mental health unit you are describing. I worked on all the acute in-patient wards there as a care assistant for 7 years in the 1990’s. I just read your Guardian article and was saddened to learn that the unit at Southmead is closing. Even when I worked there the unit was often overfull and chaotic at times but it had only just been built so was a much better environment than some of the more old-fashioned places that mental health patients could still end up in in Bristol at the time. It seems a bizarre decision to close a modern, purpose-built unit when in-patient beds have become so scarce.
I left to train as a social worker as I could not cope any longer with the institutional hierarchy of hospitals. I met one of the ex-patients while I was training and we agreed that we’d both escaped in one way or another. The place you describe for respite and escape from the world that in-patient beds can offer is not perfect but it can be better than being left to the loneliness and ignorance of the crowd.
I’m really glad that you have written such a powerful novel that describes so powerfully similar experiences to those that brought the people I met to hospital as these are rarely the voices that get heard.