Irritable Bullocks

Ever since Mrs Blog alighted at Wrexham station on Friday afternoon I have been in a frenetic whirlwind of weekend activities leaving me looking forward to the relative ease of the working week. In summary I have...

• Found a modest oasis in the gastronomic desert that is Wrexham (sorry, but I have been looking in vain for somewhere nice to eat here since the 1980s). The Eastern Sheraton restaurant in the town centre offers good Chinese food without heart-stressing levels of monosodium glutamate.

• Walked north of the Travelodge at Rhostyllen to discover the whereabouts of the Eisteddfod's Maes and explore the old iron-works on the Clywedog river.

• Visited Chester for the first time on Saturday, circumambulating its ancient walls and wondering at its unique split-level mediaeval shops (the "Chester Rows"). And it takes only a little imagination to conjure the Roman legionary fortress which still defines the lay-out of this extraordinary place.

• Wisely chose Italian chain Carluccio's for a fine lunch including an unusual penne pasta with cured sausage sauce.


• Spent a pleasurable three hours admiring RSC veteran Natalie Grady playing the sexiest ever Rosalind in "As You Like It" (which is saying something as Rosalind is Shakespeare's sexiest character) in Chester's Grosvenor Park. I don't know if she was as good - or as sexy - when she was in Coronation Street but I might have changed the habit of a life-time to find out. See the Guardian's review here.

• On Sunday crossed the Mersey by ferry from Birkenhead to Liverpool (my first visit) - thanks to Hafal's North Wales employment lead Janet Randles for suggesting this stylish means of transport.

• Admired some great works including a few first division (or in this city should I say "Premier League"?) impressionists in the Walker Gallery and raced past the usual corn you find in museums including a huge gallery full of rubbish "classical" Victorian sculpture. I also liked a Lucian Freud portrait from 1951 (topical as he died this month). His sitter apparently complained that his legs were too short, to which Freud tersely replied that his legs were indeed too short...




• Lunched agreeably at the Bistro Franc in Hanover Street. £8.95 for three courses including sea-bass, chicken chasseur, crème brûlée...Wow.

• Met the entire population of the city visiting the new Museum of Liverpool which opened this week. Interesting stuff but just a little self-congratulatory? Good to see the local crowd not taking some of the more sentimental bits too seriously. Also a section on Liverpool's Welsh community...




• Back in Wrexham scrambled up Bersham Colliery slag-heap - dusty, a little dangerous and, technically, a criminal offence but necessary as the Coal Board (or whatever its successor body is called) has failed to maintain the adjacent footpath which I was attempting to follow. On top of the tip there is a panoramic view over the fields where the sunny weather has prompted frantic haymaking. Finally chased out of a field (while on a legitimate footpath) by a herd of irritable bullocks.

...in fact everything except actually attend the Eisteddfod happening on my temporary doorstep - that treat is for tomorrow.

Safeguarding

To the launch of the excellent training film on safeguarding created by service-users in Wrexham supported by Hafal (see my post of 22 July below). The film was created in partnership with Wrexham Council and the Social Services Improvement Agency (SSIA)and will be used to train practitioners across Wales and beyond on the crucial issue of protecting vulnerable people from exploitation and abuse.

Health and Social Services Minister Lesley Griffiths, also of course the local Assembly Member here, commended the film fulsomely drawing attention to the professionalism of Hafal's Expert Patient Trainers who had made it. In my spot I tried to draw out the wider contribution which service-users could make in Wales, in particular to (i) making better use of the limited resources available for secondary mental health services and (ii) implementation of Part 2 of the Mental Health Measure next year - the only show in town at the moment. We will keep working on Lesley when she visits our stand at the Eisteddfod!

Tug-of-War

170 service users, carers and their families turned out yesterday to support the "Taking the Wheel" campaign at Hafal’s annual North Wales event held in the glorious setting of Eirias Park, Colwyn Bay. I am proud to report that my team won the tug-of-war competition which required four consecutive back-breaking contests: I am not sure whom to contact first - my doctor or my solicitor.

The campaign (see the details here) is empowering people with a serious mental illness in Wales to take control of their lives and the services they receive. It's been a big hit across Wales this summer not least at the Royal Welsh Show which took place last week. Following yesterday's event our intrepid team set off to put together our stand at the Eisteddfod starting this Saturday in Wrexham. By the end of the summer we will have held events in all 22 counties.

Thomas, a service user attending the annual North Wales Event for the second year running, told us: "I’m really interested in this idea of taking control of resources so I can purchase my own care package. This sounds really good to me because it not only means I would get a choice, but it would also keep services on their toes because they would have to convince me to choose what they have on offer. This could make all the difference because at the moment services often have a take-it-or-leave-it approach and they aren’t really incentivised to provide what we want." Quite so - only real consumer power will make services truly responsive.

The event has saw service users and carers from across North Wales take the opportunity to compete in a number of activities including Tai Chi, boules, kite-making, five-a-side football, a treasure hunt and of course the infamous tug-of-war.

Hafal's Janet Randles, who must take much credit for organising the event along with many colleagues and volunteers, said: "It's been a fun day out for clients, carers and staff as there’s been so much to do."

A Difficult Subject

The Norwegian Church in Cardiff this week

This morning on Radio 4 John Humphrys chaired a short debate about whether Anders Breivik, the self-confessed Norwegian homicide, was suffering from mental illness or acting rationally from extreme political convictions.

Of course this makes for uncomfortable listening but I do think it is important to consider what is undoubtedly being discussed informally across the world. People with a serious mental illness and those who support them need to join in the discussion carefully in order to avoid misunderstanding and the risk of increasing stigma.

Nobody knows whether Breivik is mentally ill at this stage (as I write his lawyer has just claimed that he "probably" is) but that will not stop the discussion nor will it diminish the confusion which affects many people about the different reasons why people act violently.

My contribution to this discussion is to challenge the widely-expressed view of pundits, politicians, and the public that it is “impossible to understand” why people act in this way. In fact, if people stop to think about it, it is possible to analyse rationally why people act violently.

Most people believe that there are circumstances which justify homicide – for example in just wars, under severe political oppression, or in self-defence. There are few true pacifists among us.

We know that political extremists who commit homicides typically feel justified by reference to some extreme peril which they believe faces “their people”, country, religion, or culture. This is usually unjustifiable but not incomprehensible because we can readily point to political homicides which we would justify. For example, many of the public would justify the actions of underground political cells (some enjoying little public support at the time) which violently attacked occupying Axis personnel in war-time Europe or the minority political establishment in pre-liberation South Africa. What we have to do is to differentiate the causes espoused by the French Resistance and the ANC from those of al Qaeda and those expressed in Breivik’s website. That is something we are all capable of doing; it is not mysterious and we do understand the difference.

I would argue that the motivations behind most of the small numbers of homicides committed by people with serious mental illness are also comprehensible.

A very few people by reason of psychosis have delusions which many of the public would, if they experienced them, agree might appear as a justification for homicide. Examples would be: paranoid delusions leading a person to believe that somebody else was about to kill them, leading to a homicide "justified" through self-defence; or delusions leading a person to believe that another person or persons had violent and evil intentions for all humankind and therefore, again, that homicide would be “justified” for the greater good. These and similar delusions are quite common in the very uncommon circumstances of homicides by people with a serious mental illness.

So how does understanding the reasons for these different sorts of homicide affect how we should respond to them?

In the case of political extremism society is entitled to pursue, convict, and punish humanely those who commit unjustifiable homicides even if the perpetrators believe they were right in what they did. Their wrong political judgement is not a reason for clemency.

In cases where people are led by their psychotic delusions to believe that a homicide is justified society is fully entitled to protect itself and so restrict the freedom of those people as long as they pose a real threat. However, logically there should also surely be a significant degree of compassion on the basis of “There but for the grace of God”. Severe mental illness can affect any of us – or our nearest and dearest – and none of us can be sure how we would act in extreme psychosis.

In reality the "impossible to understand" line is defensive because deep down we fear comparison of those who act violently with our own experience of anger, delusion, disproportionate responses to events, etc. But we would do better to acknowledge that we all have the potential for violence and so we can often understand very well (not necessarily the same thing as "sympathise with") those who act violently. Through that acknowledgement we could distinguish more clearly between those who act violently for political reasons and those who do so by reason of their mental illness - and thereby we could respond more appropriately and effectively to both.

Heroic

Up the Black Mountain this weekend to explore the derelict lime quarries and kilns accessible east off the scenic pass between Llangadog and Brynaman. The large number of inns in the tiny village of Llangadog is explained historically by the necessity for the waggoners collecting lime to stay two nights as it took a whole day to ascend the mountain, load the lime, and then descend back to the village.

The wagons were long gone but in the 1970s I joined in the heroic efforts of this still distinctive and self-contained community to keep all the pubs open through our determined custom. But that battle has been lost as the Plough Inn and, further up the mountain, the Three Horseshoes, Pont Aber, and New Inn are all gone - but not the memories of youthful adventures in all of them (not least in the Plough where I met for the first time a raven-haired local beauty who is now Mrs Blog but was then a welder in a satanic chain factory - also long gone - on the banks of the Sawdde).

Back up the mountain you can tell it must have been hard to work the quarries at such a great height though you can imagine some small comfort which the heat from the kilns would have given in winter. Dangerous work, too, as this memorial indicates:



I've soon had enough of this bleak industrial landscape. Halfway down an enterprising trailer in the car-park enables me to add to my "Five a Day" tally (or have I misunderstood this public health message?)...

Hafal Telly

I'm looking forward to meeting the new Health and Social Services Minister Lesley Griffiths AM next Friday when she will launch "Safeguarding for the protection of vulnerable adults", an educational DVD made by Hafal mental health service users and carers in conjunction with Wrexham Council and the Social Services Improvement Agency (SSIA). See more on this here.

The aim of the DVD is to provide information on safeguarding and to examine what the barriers to reporting abuse are. The film's message is: "Talk to somebody. Don't put up with it. Don't keep it to yourself. It's not OK."

I've had a sneak preview and it really works well, demonstrating that the best people to convey otherwise dusty and technical-sounding messages about protecting vulnerable adults are the people who are directly affected. Keep an eye on this brilliant group of service users who are making a reputation as excellent communicators as well as working really effectively with our colleagues in Wrexham to improve local mental health services.

Hafal's Wrexham Community Link Worker, Denise Charles, who was involved with the production of the DVD, tells me that the Minister is a good friend to Hafal in her constituency: "I'm delighted that Lesley is launching the DVD because she has been very supportive of Hafal in Wrexham. For example, last year she was interviewed by service users from our project for our newsletter, ‘Voice'. She later invited them to the Senedd on St David's Day this year where she treated them to a tour of the building and gave them VIP treatment."

Meanwhile our Royal Welsh stand has been a runaway success, even attracting its own choir (follow this link).

Barbarella

It's high summer (somebody please tell the Almighty) so it's time for the Swansea Grand's repertory season. The first offering is a nearly successful two-man thriller about an actor-producer who entraps, lectures at length, and then murders a drama critic who has dogged and wrecked his career. The critic suggests to his tormentor that he is suffering from serious mental illness and this is cheerfully acknowledged. However, this "madness" is just another example of lazy dramatic convention necessary to support the unlikely plot - so no mental health insights intended or delivered.

The play is full of bitter, excoriating criticism of critics in general which must surely be a personal matter for the (real) playwright, Tudor Gates (1930 - 2007), who had a very modest career as a telly and stage writer, failed as a Parliamentary candidate for the Liberals, but played a more successful role as a trade unionist in the creative field.

Gates' most prestigious billing was as one of several writers who stitched together the plot of science fiction pseudery "Barbarella" (1968), one of the silliest films ever made (the criticism of it may therefore have inspired Gates' play) but still well known for propelling a youthful Jane Fonda into stardom.