Introduction Transformations Oral History

Woodlands Unit, Hastings


18 November 2013, Interview: Sally Ann Schilling, at Sally's house, Hove, Sussex. Sally talks about a number of spells in Mill View Psychiatric Hospital, 2000 to the present, and how it has changed over the last few years, as well as time in Hastings Psychiatric hospital (I believe this to be the Woodlands Unit) when there was no room at Mill View, and brief stays in hospital in Scotland, Africa and Crete.

Interview by Jon Potter

Jon

So this is a recording with Sally Ann Schilling, and we were talking about the art room at Mill View hospital

Sally

So I decided you know that as I was in Promenade Ward and there was no art room, to sort of create one and I just got lots of art materials and when nobody was looking I took this big table and, it was a big table for six people, and I waited, because there was never any nurses on duty, they were always just sitting in the office doing nothing in those days. It's changed a lot in that respect, I mean it is a much better place now. But I got this table for six and when nobody was looking shunted it down the hall and put it in the ladies room and set it all up for art. And took photographs of all the art, and you are not allowed to take photographs in Mill View so I hid my camera in the grand piano and had them developed and I did actually send them to Rebecca Hill and everybody participated and people liked the personalisation of the room so much that some people who had less money went to the pound shop and bought cushions, some people bought little potted plants. And you know, it was quite something really. Kept me occupied

Jon

What kind of date was this roughly, was this early years of this century

Sally

Yes definitely early years of this century

Jon

And you have mentioned how things have improved, in what way have things changed more recently?

Sally

Well, most significantly with the nurses, I mean there were always some nice nurses, but there weren't many nurses on duty, they tended to sit in what I call their glass fishbowl offices, and if you knock on the door they just look sort of oh my God you know, fed up, and there would always be people hanging around for attention outside the office. But now they keep a, well I say a minimum of people, they obviously have enough people in the office, but they have a lot of people out on the floor now, and they are much better, er, Lindsay Towle I think it is said that you know they have had a different type of training now, they have had to retrain the nurses because the last time but one when I was in hospital, not this year but last year, the medication was making me sick every night and so I'd take my medication and then just go, I didn't make myself sick because I didn't want the medication, I just couldn't hold it down and I had terrible constipation. But nobody was interested in the slightest, and of course without a doctor changing my card I had to keep taking the same drugs every night and so I was so despairing I was vomiting and I was sobbing and I was crying in the garden and there was a nurse just sitting a few feet away from me and she just completely ignored what was going on, didn't ask me if I was okay or anything, and I said to her aren't you going to ask me if I am okay and she just sort of sat there, guarding the television, because the television was, what they wanted you to do was to watch television because then only one, if you were in your room doing things people would have to walk up and down looking in the rooms. But if you were all gathered around the television and they had it fixed like that so that in the evening once it got dark the garden got closed but it was opened every hour on the hour, which was a very good way to check where the residents were because as soon as it chimed the hour vumph everybody was queueing up for the garden and they could tick people off. It was a very good trick actually.

But there has always been good staff there, I don't want to, sort of say that it was, there have always been some good staff, there have been a lot of people that I felt were scared of the patients and hadn't got a clue what to do with the patients, and I found that changed a lot, I mean so

Jon

So most recently you have been in this year, 2013

Sally

Yes this spring, yes I was in this spring and last spring, and last spring was when I escaped and took myself to Scotland and had a very nice experience up there thank you very much

Jon

So describe how you escaped

Sally

Well first I went over the wall twice, and then they actually gave me leave which was quite surprising, you would have thought if they, and I had an hour's leave, and by the time the hour was up, I was packed and on the train to Euston, then I went to Glasgow, and it was Easter weekend in Glasgow, and also Celtic had just won so everybody was partying and drinking and I just stayed and had a city break in Glasgow, and went to the gallery and joined this arts club and had a lovely time, chatted to all the Kashmiris there and, and all of them wanted to take me to parties and, I must have come across as quite normal, because they were all upbeat Glaswegians who were a bit pissed.

Then I thought sooner or later I need to get off CCTV so I went to this little fishing village where I've got friends and there's a cave in the beach and I thought in my madness I would go and stay in the cave, I thought, no police force in this little fishing village. So it was all going very well, my friends up in Dunyell were looking after me there and I was sort of settling down, but I suddenly realised I cut my nose off to spite my face because though I'd evaded the police very successfully nobody knew where the hell I was or would be able to find out, I could never go home. It just suddenly occurred to me one day, I can't go home because as soon as I cross the border, you know, I'm going to have handcuffs and be taken back to Mill View hospital. So in the end I got myself sectioned up in Scotland because I thought if I got let off section in Scotland then I wouldn't have to go back… That's how much I was scared of Mill View and how much I hated it.

But they were so humorous up in Scotland, and I nearly dropped off my chair when we were having lunch and one of the nurses said this is where the Scottish come to get well, and I thought get well, come to a hospital to get well. And they were always laughing, and they had a different funding system. They gave the nurses just a small amount of money each week so they could do something creative or special with it, you know, maybe sometimes they got some takeaway food, or just, once they took us out to tea, and they took us out on a walk so they had a special little, it was all run on a shoestring, all the leftover food was sold to a pig farmer, and then we had lovely bacon so I think they must have done some sort of exchange, you know how canny the Scots are. And they had to this activity room that was amazing, it had a table tennis table on it which just, you could take the net off and you could just use it to paint and the staff, there were loads of staff always on the ward, it was quite different to Mill View, with Mill View in the old days you would have five or six people in the office and one person on the ward, where as they would have two people in the office and about four or five people on the ward.

And because I was on a one-to-one, because I had escaped twice and because they didn't want me escaping again, the Scots took that quite seriously, at first I thought oh no I'm almost like in a fishbowl with people looking at me, I can't do anything without somebody watching me or following me, in the end I thought well I can make this into something positive, and I started chatting to them all and you know, they would tell you bits about their home life, and how their first marriage had gone wrong, or, they spoke to you just as if you were the same as them, they didn't talk down to you, they weren't, they didn't do this kind of pussyfooting, I mean in Sussex sometimes people talk to you like this: Sally, how are you today? You know, they would talk to you like you are an infant, they think they are being kind, and it's not the end of the world, they mean well, but it's much nicer just to be spoken to like an ordinary person

Jon

So you encountered more of that kind of, condescending attitude at Mill View

Sally

Mill View and associated NHS activities, they have always been sort of too nice, whereas these Scots would sort of joke with you, and you could stay in the art activity room till 11 at night and it was open all the time and there was always a crossword, a big crossword puzzle on a desk and as you did whatever you were doing, doing your art the staff would sit there doing crossword puzzles and they had a special art studio you could go to a couple of times a week and the staff would join in because there was somebody that ran it, and the staff would do something themselves.

Jon

Just moving back to Sussex, I know that recently you have also been in Hastings, can you just describe where you were there and how that was

Sally

Well I was in Hastings because there was no bed in Mill View at that time

Jon

And what was the place in Hastings

Sally

It's just a mental hospital I think, a bit like, I don't even know its name offhand, I'm feeling a bit brain-dead. And they had a nice art room but again it was only open at certain times, but they did allow you to take an little bits out and work in your room if you wanted to within reason, but it was a nice, it was a very well designed building because it was built around a central courtyard, like may be an Islamic building or a Mediterranean building. So you could always go out into the garden because they had no fear that you would disappear if you went into the garden, and in fact at night they left the door to the garden unblocked so if you wanted to get up and have a cigarette in the middle of the night.

In fact one night I was full of energy and couldn't get to sleep and I was bored and I want to do some art and I went into the garden and I found this reed bush and part of the reeds were slightly dying and the reeds that were dying I cut off and started weaving them together, and I weaved this huge wand and intertwined used crisp packets for colour and then I did, I made something else as well and when I came in in the morning carrying this wand thing some of the patients were really frightened because they thought I was doing black magic on them!

And then the other thing was staff then took them off me because I dried them on the radiator but once you'd woven this reed really tightly um, it was like a chord, you could hang yourself on it, so they had to confiscate it for health and safety reasons and put them in the art room, but I was out there at four in the morning making art and looking after the plants.

Jon

And has there been times when you haven't been able to do art, when that has been denied to you?

Sally

The last time I went to Mill View I think I did quite a I mean I always do art in my room, it's quite nice just to, I mean because I know about materials I always keep it immaculately clean and use, I don't you know get paint everywhere or anything like that, and I use a sponge and clean out the sink. And they turn a blind eye because they could if they wanted to say you know there's a health and safety reason why I shouldn't be doing it. But they do activities now, the staff are so friendly, I mean, I'm not frightened of going back to Mill view any more, and for the last 10 years I've been really terrified of going in there. I think may be the violence set it off but also the way Debbie Shaw treated me when I was in Promenade. That was even worse to be honest because it was so underhand and she was not a nice person, but now…

Jon

And what was her role

Sally

She was the ward manager. Beverley Halls was the assistant ward manager in those days and she was very good Bev actually. But I wasn't impressed with being accused of something that I hadn't done you know, that really upset me. Because what happened was quite funny actually, I accused the doctor of criminal negligence because he had me on thyroxine without any tests so my thyroid corrected and I was taking thyroxine which is like speed every day and my psychiatric nurse said that that could possibly bring on a high, you know but he said he couldn't say in court that, of course else he'd lose his job. So I just said, my first ward round I just accused him of criminal negligence and that didn't go down very well and the Doctor, I had a horrible time in Promenade, he kept threatening to acuphase me, do you know acuphase?

Jon

No

Sally

They, in the old days, they don't seem to do it so much any more, but you get about six of them on you, hold you down facedown and they used to bring in the big burly like footballer types, get six of you, pin you down, and then inject you in the bum, and you were sort of incapacitated for about three days. And I worked out how to antidote most of the medication you know with herbs and things like that. You know if I needed to calm down I might smoke a bit of purple sage you know, and if I wanted to re-coordinate myself I used to use peppermint and that used to help a bit because it re-coordinates your system.

But there was nothing you could do with acuphase except run for the tap and just drink as much water as you could because I always woke up with a bad back. And you shouldn't give acuphase to people that have kidney problems in the family. So it was obviously knocking my kidneys cause we do have kidney problems in my family and they never did a urine test or anything, they said they had done a test, they said they had done a blood test but you don't test kidneys with blood you test kidneys with urine. So they were just lying to me and there were occasions when they lied like when my dad had phoned and they lied and they said he hadn't. This was all in this Promenade.

To be honest that upset me more than my little experience in Pavilion being knocked about because I, I didn't like the underhand behaviour you know, but now it's, my last admission was quite a healing admission. They filled up the slats in the wall so I can't go over the wall any more which is a shame, but the nurses are so friendly there now and I really appreciated that. I think they are doing a really good job and they, they can't leave the art room open because there is a cooker in it, but I don't think that's the real reason. I think the real reason is that people you know, make a mess. They don't like mess in mental hospitals, you know hence the fuzzy felt sort of thing.

Jon

Ah yes, fuzzy felt tell us about that

Sally

Lindsay Towle thought it would be a good idea to have fuzzy felt for people to mess around with. To be honest I think I might quite enjoy fuzzy felt, at first I was really offended, I thought I'm an artist I don't want to work in fuzzy felt and my friend said why don't they introduce Mr potato head which I think is another child's toy but, you know it is very supervised the art. You go in and you get given a nice cup of herbal tea, they have got all the teas you could want. So they try and make it very, but most people aren't painting they are sticking little stickers on things which is fine as long as, but, so I did cope I just painted in my own room. But they do have an art room but I think the law now is, they don't want people in there because they like things to be under much more control and of course when you are manic you can end up painting really quite big pictures.

Jon

So what month did you come out this time round

Sally

May June

Jon

Can you describe how you have been coming out and since June

Sally

Seriously depressed, yeah, and I am not happy on my medication, but I am not sure what other medication I can take that is going to make it any better. Normally I get, after a high I get suicidal depression and its awful you know and the longest I've ever had, well I'm not sure, normally it's six months, may be not six months of suicidal depression may be six weeks or so of suicidal depression

Jon

Do you think the medication is managing that

Sally

I think the medication might even be aggravating it. Because at first I was put on olanzapine on its own, and I was so agitated I couldn't sit and have a cup of tea like this with you, if I was here, I'd be doing this and doing this and doing this then I'd be wandering into the lounge and talking from the lounge and I would be walking maybe three hours a day and I'd just, and what they reckoned one of the side-effects of olanzapine is restlessness. So basically it was agitating me so they put me on another drug, procycladin, which actually deals with the agitation, it's sort of a drug which deals with the side effects of the olanzapine. But I just feel very held down, you know Tamsin said the same actually on olanzapine, how weighted down she felt

Jon

She did much better on ketiapine

Sally

The trouble is I have had problems with ketapine because I love ketiapine I mean you can sleep any time you want when you are on ketiapine because that's how I used to cope to be honest was when things got too much I just went under the duvet and took a break but I'm awake on the medication I'm on now and you can't really say to the doctor I want a medication so I can sleep all day, and I don't like the medication I'm on because I wake up in the morning, I just have to keep quiet about that main reason. But the trouble with the ketiapine I took it on its own and on its own it doesn't keep me stable it's not enough I'm quite, I've obviously got quite a tendency to go high much more so probably than Tamsin or Jonathan, because Jonathan has only been ill once in six years and I have been in twice in the last two years which has been really hard.

Jon

So looking forward, what are your plans, objectives

Sally

Well, I just want to feel a bit better in myself so I can do something more with my life. I am feeling at the moment like I am either in deaths waiting room or I'm desperately filling time, you know as a, trying to distract myself from the depression. It seems, if I keep active that, I used to wake up at midday with ketiapine so I have got sort of, almost an extra half day sort of to deal with which would be fine if I was feeling okay, but all you want to do is roll over and have an extra hour or two kip. In the old days I was reasonably stable on lithium and ketiapine, ketiapine on its own doesn't keep me stable, the lithium with the ketiapine, I did have some problems with my thyroid with the lithium, you know I, as you can do, but somebody has mentioned a drug called I think arapixadal, or ara something, something a bit like that, that's a new drug, and I know three people who are on it that swear by it so I might possibly try that. Um, because I am a bit, what's the word, it's a bit of a conundrum the medication because sodium, when I was on sodium valproate I put on four stone, when I was on, I came back from Scotland you see last year and they just put me on 400 ketiapine which isn't very much because I have always been on two drugs before, and quite high doses of them. And unfortunately ketiapine is quite a nice drug because the only side-effect is it makes you a bit sleepy and I didn't find I put on too much weight with it, but I can't, unfortunately I can't rely on it for keeping me stable and this is the difficult balance that I have got at the moment. I mean I think the olanzapine will keep me stable because it keeps me so bloody depressed and you don't go from being depressed, well some people might do but I don't go from being depressed to a high, there is always an interim you know where I start feeling more cheerful and then as I start feeling more cheerful that's when I have got to watch it sort of thing.

Jon

Just a few last questions, just to cover this questionnaire, that we have, was there would you say emotional and spiritual support in Mill View and has that changed?

Sally

Well in the old days they had a noticeboard saying that they had an interfaith space and they had also they had on the noticeboard your rights with Mind, and I went, I'd like to see the interfaith space, well apparently, Bev just laughed and said it's the cupboard under the stairs and I went and had a look at this cupboard under the stairs near Regency and it had a sort of broom and a few paint pots and it was like that for months, I think they had probably given up on the idea, I don't know if anybody ever goes in there, it was quite funny because, being into The Craft, I mean I don't bother these days, but I said to the…

Jon

The craft meaning

Sally

Witchcraft. I just sort of said to Bev who had a great sense of humour and I've got a feeling Bev is also a pagan from the subtle innuendos and I said I might bring in my broom and put it in the broom cupboard and she said she'd bring her broom in and put it in the broom cupboard as well.

So as for spiritual help, not really, no and the rights which we were meant to have with Mind, discussed your medication, treated with dignity and respect, and all these things, that was when I was in Promenade Ward, and we were all queuing for the pills and I just read it out: able to discuss your medication, and we all chanted bollocks, treated with dignity and respect, and by now everybody in the queue "bollocks", you know we just went through all of them, and their response, they had pinned it up high on the board basically so you couldn't read it, and when I made these comments, instead of actually discussing it they just took the notice down from the board and took all the Mind leaflets away.

So spiritual not really, but certainly there is a lot more emotional support there now. And I felt warm towards them, yes and I think Lindsay Towle, she has retrained staff she has done a good job, I felt a great deal of empathy from the staff and humour, and it was a nice, it was a friendly place now and that's what I need to get better you know, it would be nice to have a few men around, but… Then I'd probably just to get up to mischief.

Jon

And mealtimes, how would you describe those and how was the food.

Sally

Oh the food was, I'm quite easy with food really to be honest, I'm not, because there's lots of people that are allergic to this that and the other and I'll eat pretty much anything, so the food was fine, but you will have allowed out, event eventually I was allowed to go down stairs as long as I was accompanied, because I had to be accompanied because I had done a bunk last time, but the food you got served up stairs there would be a sort of mad dash to order what you want, you had to be careful though because in the morning you had to order what you wanted and if you missed that then you know you didn't get any food or you had to just get anything they… They would always rustle something up for you, but they were sometimes a bit remiss in finding you and getting you to tick what you wanted.

Jon

How many people would there be on each of these wards?

Sally

I am guessing about 15

Jon

15 on each ward

Sally

Maybe but I'm not very good at that sort of thing.

Jon

Oh, the other thing, what about being on mixed wards, and then single sex wards, and the difference between those.

Sally

Well, I quite enjoyed it on the mixed wards really but it was good when the men were gentlemen you know, obviously men with a violent history, it's good that they are put in a different ward. I mean it did mean that you know, if you wanted to wander around in your pyjamas or half dressed or something nobody really minded. I did enjoy the male company, we all used to gather round the snooker table and have one hell of a time at Hastings you know, and it's a good way, I met my last boyfriend at Mill View, so there will be no more, unless I go again, there will be no more partnerships coming from, quite a few people meet people in hospital. I know a few, so…

Jon

Great, well, is there anything else that we haven't covered, do you think about Mill View or mental hospitals. Briefly maybe you could just talk about your time being sectioned abroad.

Sally

Oh yes, there was two incidences, well one when I was in Africa and I had drummed solidly for four hours in the summer, the African sun, holding eye contact with the guy because I noticed, I know it sounds a bit daft but if I held I contact with him it was easier for me to sort of coordinate because I am not very good at, I went on this drumming holiday and I am not very good at drumming, it was a daft idea. Anyway I then went a bit sort of psychotic and the Africans just shrugged their shoulders they weren't slightly bothered they just said it's the drums, she has gone into trance, it's the drums, and within about 24 hours I was back to normal, so that was interesting, there was a lady on the holiday who was a psychiatric nurse in a prison who was a bit worried for me and gave me some Valium but apart from that it just sort of went unnoticed as if it was the most normal thing in the world that somebody might go a bit odd after they had done drumming.

And then in Crete, I, well I was messing about in an old Cretan tomb, I was trying to time travel in this Cretan tomb which was right next to this Nazi war cemetery and I sort of open and up my chakras, I don't know what I thought I was doing really, and then when I left I felt like a bad spirit left with me and then I ended up going psychotic in Crete. I actually got sexually assaulted by one of the police officers on the way to the mental hospital, because the police came and picked me up and took me to the local hospital, well it wasn't a mental hospital but to the local hospital. But it wasn't too serious and I wasn't too bothered because I was so mad I thought I was in an alien spaceship anyway so it all went a bit over my head. But I mean they shouldn't be doing things like that and I was more worried when I got to the Cretan hospital that they were going to inject me because you know I get a bit frightened of injections, but instead of the usual pin you down business they just got you, you know like you do in the doctors, stand like that, and just do that, and stick it in, so much more dignity.

And they were very nice to me actually but they let me out after three days and it seems to be an odd pattern now, well it doesn't seem to be any pattern, like in Africa I was almost back to normal in 24-hours, in Crete I was almost back to normal in three days, but now it seems to last longer, I mean the psychosis never lasted longer than about three days, but to the manic period, which I am perfectly fine and safe in, the manic period, but the trouble is I have started to spend money and accumulate too much stuff, that's a bit of a worry, you know, how I can stop myself doing that if it happens again. Because I spent a lot of money this time and it was a bit of a reality check because I bought a few things before I went a bit crazy this time, and spent thousands of pounds, so it's sort of a car, I really don't want, the positive thing is that I don't like going into Mill view again, but they probably won't keep me in there that long now because of the shortage of beds.

And my worry is, I am trying to put things in place to protect my finances, but it is not really possible to do it because the bank won't let someone take over from you unless you go to court and set something up, and once you set something up it is cast in stone so it's all the time, you can't have something that just last while you are sectioned. So I am just going to limit my overdraft facility and put as much spare money in fixed rate bonds so that I can't get at it, but the difficulty is of course I need to live off money as well, so if I put everything in fixed rate bonds I can't actually, because I am living off capital you see. But hopefully, if I stay on this olanzapine I don't think I'll ever go high again, I'll be dreaming of going high, saving up… But that's probably…

Jon

Yes… And I wish you all the very best with finding the right medication and pursuing that

Sally

Yes I hope that will make a bit of a difference

Jon

Many thanks for sharing your memories.