DIMH 2021 CONFERENCE
A big part of James Leadbitter’s work with young people, healthcare professionals, and vulnerable adults, involves finding out what the ‘ideal features’ service-users would like to see in mental healthcare settings are.
that it isn’t a bad thing to need a space to go mad. The problem is though that most mental health hospitals feel like they are more about punishment than love; they need some mad love.” He added: “Is it possible to go mad in a positive way? How would you create a safe space in which to do so, and, if you could design your own asylum, what would it be like?”
Creating more ‘positive’ spaces As a project, James Leadbitter explained, ‘Madlove’ created ‘positive spaces to experience mental distress and enlightenment’. He elaborated: “We’re bringing together people with and without mental health experiences, mental health professionals, academics, and anybody else on the spectrum, to try to build the most beautiful, most crazy, and most bonkers mental asylum we dare dream of – a playful and desirable space to go mad – countering the popular myth that mental health hospitals are places to be frightened of. So,” he continued, “collectively, we are attempting to create unique spaces where mutual care can blossom, stigma and discrimination be challenged, and divisions between staff, patients, professionals, and people with lived experience, can be understood and worked through together – and hopefully madness can thus be experienced in a less painful way.” Madlove was, he stressed, not about ‘the lunatics taking over the asylum’, but ‘much more radical than that’. “What we are proposing,” he explained, “is that we (the service-users) design, build, and run the asylum, not just take it over.” It was, he believed, “time to put the ‘treat’ back into treatment”.
UK and international workshops ‘Since making this proposal’, James Leadbitter said he and his associates had run 25 different workshops across the UK and internationally, in everywhere from ‘high-end’ arts centres, such as London’s South Bank, to children’s wards, high security hospitals, and community settings.
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The studio space at the hospital used by the young people and nurses from London’s Great Ormond Steet Hospital for the six-month-long ‘Oh My GOSH, You’re Wellcome Kitten’ project.
He said: “We’ve done this in locations from Ireland to Indonesia, listening to over 500 people with lived experience, mental health professionals, plus carers, families, and allies. We’ve met some incredible people, who’ve been through the most horrific experiences, yet have still managed to turn around to something that is compassionate, hopeful, and generous in how they think about themselves in care.”
A first for long-term service-user James Leadbitter said here he would ‘just jump back in time’ to somebody he met in hospital in Ireland just before the start of the COVID-19 outbreak. He said: “She came to the workshop with a huge smile on her face, and told me: ‘I’ve been in hospital for nearly 30 years, and have been waiting for somebody to ask me for what the perfect mental health hospital would be like. You’re the first person to do so, and I’ve got so many ideas. This three-hour workshop is not going to be long enough, but let’s give it a go.’ So, in the workshop, we would ask things like: ‘What does good care look and feel like?’, and ‘Emotionally, when you receive good care, how does that make you feel?’ We also asked ‘What does good mental health sound like, look like, smell like, taste like, and feel like?’ We questioned participants about the qualities of the people around them in mental health, and asked ‘If you could design your own asylum, what would it be like? What activities and features do you want in the perfect environment?’”
Spaces for mental health should be ‘stimulating, not deadening’: “There should be loud music and quiet music, silence and natural landscapes, mountains, sea to swim in, and you should be able to look at the stars”
An extensive list
James Leadbitter continued: “We received really extensive feedback; you can go on my website and download this information freely, but it’s impossible to list all the ideas we received.” He recalled a workshop in Indonesia where the translator had said: ‘I’m really sorry, but English is just not a good enough language to really explain what this person is describing, but I’ll draw you a picture.’ “Everybody says the same thing,” he continued. “Wherever you go in the world – high security facilities, towns, or a community setting in Finland or Indonesia – they say the care should be empowering, flexible, on a human scale, and led by other people with lived experience, because if somebody says, ‘I don’t feel great, I’m depressed. I’m anxious and suicidal’, and another person responds: ‘I know how you feel’, that’s half the job done. What the NHS should be doing is taking people that have been on a journey and got better, and employing them, because it’s so transformative to be in a room with somebody who’s gone on a journey and got better. You think: ‘If you can do it, so can I’.”
Need for ‘stimulating’ spaces’ James Leadbitter said spaces for mental health should be ‘stimulating, not deadening’: “There should be loud music and quiet music, silence and natural landscapes, mountains, sea to swim in, and you should be able to look at the stars. Smells should be linked to positive memories, tastes should be both super- healthy, and deliciously unhealthy. Touch should be about natural fibres, and cuddling animals.” During a six-month stint he had spent working on a CAMHS unit at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, ‘the best moment’ had been when staff brought in some petting dogs, and the young service-users were able to cuddle one. James Leadbitter said the staff in mental health units should be ‘tender, funny, available, and calm’, with lived experience and a good work/life balance.
JANUARY 2022 | THE NETWORK
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