The BFOR Blog Tour
Throughout August and into September 2019 the UK based Books for Older Readers (#BFOR) Group is having a blog tour, visiting the pages of some of its members and taking a peek at articles and book reviews, or extracts from work done by or suitable to bring to the attention of members.
The group comprises both readers and authors, and the BFOR web page can be found here, while the Facebook group is here. Check them out.
Today it is my turn to post an article that might be of interest, and I have chosen to provide an introduction for readers to my lifetime association with Psychiatry, and my forthcoming free-verse poetry collection – The New Asylum – a memoir of psychiatry. For me, this story includes aspects of inheritance, and parent child relationships, each leading to a lifelong commitment to and association with the field.
Psychiatry and me
My parents and the mental asylum
My personal association with psychiatry goes back over 60 years, now, and spans almost as long as I’ve been alive.
It began around 1958 when my parents and my paternal grandparents arrived in Australia as new immigrants seeking a second chance in life, away from communist ruled Croatia (then part of Yugoslavia). On arrival in Australia, they were sponsored to live and work in a small rural town in north east Victoria, called Beechworth, and my mother quickly obtained work in the local Mayday Hills Mental Asylum, as those institutions were then termed.
She was employed to work as an untrained member of the nursing staff, known as a Ward Assistant, and she learned to speak English from fellow staff members hailing from various parts of Europe, and from the patients in her care. A peculiar case of blind leading blind, and the language of insanity serving as a template for the spoken word.
My father initially found work in local sawmills as he had some skills in milling timber. Sawmill work is hard physical work though, and is subjected to exposure from the elements and fluctuating demand. He considered himself fortunate to get a job a couple of years later working as a junior Kitchen Hand in the main kitchen of the institution. The kitchen catered for around 800 (and up to 1,000) patients at that time, and for the staff that worked within the Asylum. These included doctors and nurses and allied health staff, carpenters, market gardeners and herdsmen, tailors, hairdressers and engineers.
It was a complete village and entirely walled off from the community outside by a massive Ha-Ha wall.
Mayday Hills Mental Asylum Ha-Ha Wall remnant c. 2019
Myself and the Mental Asylum
As a child I visited one or other of my parents at work on a frequent basis.
I would generally visit my father in and around down-time in the kitchen. Between the flurries of activity required for preparation and serving of the three daily meals, and the clean up afterwards, there was considerable free time through a 10 hour shift.
The men from the kitchen (and they were almost exclusively men, at that time) had access to a massive full sized billiard table that I could barely see above. I was in awe of that table for a long time.
I would visit my mother on the wards where she worked, and generally this would be on a weekend because the Charge Nurse didn’t work on weekends, and only if she was working in a ward considered ‘safe enough’ for me to unofficially visit.
Some of the wards were decidedly ‘not safe’ for a young fellow. Mum sometimes told me of supervising patient meals when she was still inexperienced. She would stand in the doorway of the dining room and watch food and crockery fly through the air, unable to do anything to stop it.
A thing I did love as a child was collecting sets of picture cards. These came in many of the breakfast cereal packets at that time, and I had special ways of acquiring large numbers of these. I won’t reveal my methods here, but I can say that they involved a particular arrangement that I had with a certain Mr Kelly, who was the Asylum’s Chief Storekeeper.
Mayday Hills Mental Asylum General Store c 2019
The New Asylum – a memoir of psychiatry
I have many stories to tell about my childhood adventures in psychiatry, and my later journey – an inheritance bequeathed by my parents, I sometimes think – as a Student Nurse, then a qualified Psychiatric Nurse working in acute settings, a manager of such services, and ultimately back again, as an older generation nurse, working with a few folk who have acquired long term or lifelong disabilities as a result of their psychiatric illnesses.
I’m looking forward to sharing these stories with you in my forthcoming collection – The New Asylum – a memoir of psychiatry.
This is an often confronting collection that seems particularly apt at the present time, now that the era of Asylums – the loony bins – is behind us, and the seemingly endless chaos of contemporary psychiatric treatment and service provision is all around.
The style of this book is similar to that of Small Town Kid (see below), and anyone who has enjoyed reading those adventures is likely to also enjoy following the Kid into a lifetime spent working and experiencing public psychiatry.
A firm release date is pending, but I’m planning for early November 2019.
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Other publications
Devil In The Wind (May, 2019)
Devil In The Wind captures the voices of victims and survivors of the catastrophic Black Saturday bushfires that took place in Victoria (Australia) in 2009. See the full blurb here.
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Small Town Kid (Dec. 2018)
Small Town Kid is a free verse poetry memoir of growing in rural Victoria (Australia) in the 1960s and 70s. See the full blurb here.
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Sounds like a fascinating collection! Congratulations on putting these memories to paper. x
Thanks Jean. As seems to be the case for me so often, I don’t feel I had a choice. The poems were what I did as a way of coming to grips with the things I was involved in.
Never seriously thought they’d end up in a book, but I’m so pleased it’s happening.
Thank you.
Hearty congratulations on your forthcoming book, Frank. A difficult area to work in, I’m sure. My unstinting admiration for all you dedicated people who do valuable work. Writing poems must be a release. Cheers!
Hiya Joy. Thank you.
Writing to make sense out of my day was a staple element in helping me to survive the experience, especially in the early days, but also right through my career.
It’s a delight to see these thoughts and efforts pass from scribbles to manuscript and finally to book form.
This sounds fascinating. I have done some research into the Crichton Royal Lunatic Asylum which was in Dumfries and was one of the most progressive mental health institutions int he 19th century.
The history of the asylums and the reform movements that swept over them in waves, as well as their effect on the Mental Health Acts in force at the time, is a real eye opener I think, Mary.
Amazing creatures they were and amazing societal implications.
I don’t anticipate my little effort having quite such an impact, but I do think that the lived experience is extraordinary for anyone who hasn’t been exposed to the public system.
I hope so, at least.
Thanks you, Mary.