My brush with the law

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By Keri

There is no doubt I have an argumentative streak in me. With the onset of mental illness in my late teens, this was exacerbated, to the point where my own parents said ‘they could not cope with me’. My younger brother used to watch in disbelief, as I clashed with my mum and dad. Besides the ignorant ill-informed comments, he once said, ‘Are you training to be a barrister?’

My-brush-with-the-law-pin - My parents were probably frightened about my safety that night, when they got the police involved. They thought they were doing the right thing.

It was true I found power in arguing and one summer’s evening after my A-levels, I lost it with my family, who simply did not understand me, and walked out on them, threatening never to come back. I always meant to return, I only needed a breather. Mum and dad called the police.

What I remember now over a quarter of a century later, is being apprehended by two police officers, as I was storming my way across the Downs. Then frogmarched with a policeman either side of me down to the local constabulary and slung into a cell.

My relationship with my mother disintegrated at this point.

Eighteen years old and this was the treatment for an argument? Heaven knows what we were arguing about! Certainly not usual teen stuff – more about me not towing their hard line and not turning my music down.
I once brought up this incident with my father but it did not go anywhere. I have also independently talked about this brief incarceration when I moved hundreds of miles away from my family. The practitioner did not understand the brutality of the police’s actions nor my parents. And that was a small victory for me. To have someone on my side.
For that fateful evening, I was kept in a visible cell in the police station and then transported to a local psychiatric ward, where I would spend three separate long summers until I met someone who I foolishly thought could support me.

With the announcement today that PM Theresa May is stopping young adults being detained for a mental illness, it brought back that time to me. The sadness came flooding back.

Recently, I have been told how police officers treated a situation with a mentally ill person in my current hometown. Not heavy-handed but with some sensitivity to the sufferer. I appreciate they are taking governmental orders in their roles. I know the reckless media blame mentally ill for ills they have not committed before the truth is known. Society has a lot to learn to know what it is like to suffer with a mental problem. People tar us all with the same brush! And should we question a parents’ tough love for their child?

Perhaps spending the summers of my youth in hospital saved my life?

It certainly sucked away my confidence and shrouded me in disgust and shame for many years.It gives me some satisfaction that this hospital building, where I wasted precious years, was demolished.
Until forgiveness and reconciliation became key to my existence, I struggled with my mother. How could she have done this to her only daughter? Abandoned me to these professionals who were strangers? I knew I was a good person at eighteen years old but why do others assume you are the bad guy when you have a mental health condition you did not ask for?

In that bleak hospital, I drew a picture of a cyclist and one of my childhood friends still has it ‘ready to flog!’ he jokingly says. Since that time I have been on a road to recovery. I have met with an award-winning NHS female psychiatrist, I am on good meds, met people who have transformed my life and something has happened to me too.

One of the popular psychiatrists on the ward in my youth said about me and a fellow sufferer ‘when you are good, you are really good’. A simplistic way of looking at a condition but at least this doctor spoke to us. For to get well, you need to get really articulate, understand the whole spectrum of human emotions and have a steely strength about you.

My parents were probably frightened about my safety that night, when they got the police involved. They thought they were doing the right thing. They were not to know the consequences on my tender soul. But it is good that this injustice of locking up disturbed young adults has been put to bed.

Compassion, kindness and empathy are the tools we ought to use to help our children move forward.