Review

A book of revelations

OUT OF MIND, OUT OF SIGHT: EXPERIENCE OF MENTAL ILLNESS
Yorkshire Arts Circus with the Centre for Psychotherapeutic Studies, Sheffield University, 1996, £5.95

In 1981 Mind published a booklet entitled Voices of experience and subtitled ‘consumer perspectives of psychiatric treatment’. Now Yorkshire Art Circus have published a book with the same theme. It is a lamentable indictment of our mental health services that, while 15 years separate the book, nothing separates the less than positive experiences.

Witness the comments about medication. From Voices of experience: ‘When I raised a query about my drugs she silenced me. “I prescribe the drugs here. I am the doctor and I am wholly responsible for your drugs.” From Out of mind, out of sight: ‘The staff said it (the medication) had been written into my notes so there was nothing they or I could do about it.’

I always find real-life stories intriguing and for those who have had experience of mental health problems many of the situations and dramas enacted within these pages will have a familiar ring to them. For those who have not been touched by mental health difficulties (and there can’t be many!) the depressing and poignant tales may be something of a revelation.

This book should be mandatory reading for people undertaking training or providing services within the mental health field – and especially for those mental health professionals who expound a purely biochemical explanation of mental health problems. The effects of bereavement, failed relationships, lack of employment opportunities, and so on, bear testament to the theory that, whatever causes mental illness, it is certainly more complex than a few chemicals running amok in the brain.

The only criticisms I have are around structure rather than content. I found the quotes on each page rather distracting as they frequently did not seem very relevant to the main text, and the source for quotes at the bottom of each page should have been given. Although the inclusion of friends’ and relatives’ perspectives was enlightening, it would have been more appropriate, in terms of continuity, to have a separate section for their views.

I was immediately attracted to this book as I have long cherished the notion of writing an erudite little piece with the same title. But there is more to this book than a clever title. We are privileged to have been granted an insight into the turmoil of mental ill-health.