Care in the Community

28/05/12 07:24 [Monday]
Last October I wrote a blog entry which for many months was on my front page at colinbrough.co.uk, saying that I regretted the fact that I was not being looked after in an asylum of the old type. This view I had derived from the medication I was then on, at a higher dosage than now, making it virtually impossible for me to do things for myself and specifically I mean things related to looking after the bungalow I live in. The first thing to say here then is that prescribing psychiatrists are not at all aware of the effects which the drugs they use can have and of the need to tailor the dosage with exceptional care.
The past two or three days I have been feeling bored - something I never felt when not on medication - and have been looking up details on the internet of the history of the former County Asylum system now replaced by the system of ‘care in the community’.
‘Care in the community is a failure’
Reflecting on the fact that the reason I myself might have needed to be looked after in an institution was medication prescribed at an inappropriate dosage, I ask myself if there are others who cannot cope for reasons in their nature. I refer readers to this blog and note the writer although seeming to be distressed by what I may summarise as over-responsivity states that to be ‘locked up’ would make matters worse. The basis of that of course is that she would be taken away from familiar things and would over-respond to a new and alarming context. This fact would not apply if she were given a home in an asylum year after year.
I have come across an article from the British Journal of Nursing which would please Conservative thinkers as lauding the old way of doing things this including effective charity provision:

British Journal of Nursing, 2011, Vol 20, No 22: Article by Diane Carpenter (Extracts)

• Abstract: This article outlines the asylum building programme of the mid-to-late nineteenth century and focuses on case studies of the two Hampshire asylums built during this period, the subject of the author’s doctoral thesis. It demonstrates the plight of ‘pauper lunatics’ before asylum reform and contrasts this with the improved quality of life provided by the Hampshire County Lunatic Asylum and the Borough of Portsmouth Lunatic Asylum respectively. Asylum care during this period followed the moral treatment regime which became the Victorian blueprint for mental health, components of which are illustrated. Criticism of this regime is addressed briefly and arguments are made against anachronistic analysis. Comparison with contemporary in-patient care and treatment is made concluding with a call to reconsider some of the better aspects of earlier care delivery. The particular experience of patients in Hampshire asylums at Christmas is used to exemplify the points raised.
• Charles Dickens, 1852: ‘There were the patients usually to be found in all such asylums among the dancers... Among them, and dancing with right good will, were attendants, male and female -- pleasant-looking men, not at all realising the conventional idea of “keepers” -- and pretty women, gracefully though not at all inappropriately dressed, and with looks and smiles as sparkling as one might hope to see in any dance in any place. Also, there were sundry bright young ladies who had helped to make the Christmas tree; and a few members of the resident-officer’s family...’
• From annual report Borough of Portsmouth Lunatic Asylum 1884: ‘The patients’ amusements continue as before. Dances are held weekly; and concerts and other entertainments at short intervals. Last January, 100 patients visited the Portsmouth Theatre Royal, by the kind invitation of Dr. Boughton, who presented each one with a book of words. Mr. White kindly supplied conveyances to take them there and back... On Christmas day, by the kind liberality of the Hon. Alice Baring, every patient had a Christmas card given to them. Some, who had also been patients here, sent small presents of apples, oranges, etc.’
• KEY POINTS: Moral treatment was a blueprint for mental health during the Victorian era and was based upon good diet, exercise, fresh air, adequate clothing, meaningful occupation, entertainment and an aesthetically pleasing environment as well as good relationships with staff; Current mental health care could usefully revisit the best that asylum care offered; Criticism of the asylum period is often anachronistic, failing to take adequate account of the historical context.

Directors of Dudley Mind

Click here to view the directors of Dudley Mind and see if you recognise any names.

Feelings of urgency

24/05/12 15:03 [Thursday]
I was on a bus the other day going down into the centre of Kingswinford and it broke down. I felt a little of the urgency which I used to experience, that is urgency kin to anxiety but not exactly the same thing, and this led me to have thoughts on how I was then (without dopamine-blocking medication) versus how I am now (with it). I can't remember just what I had in mind to do when I got to Kingswinford on the occasion I am referring to, but part of it was to go to the café in the Co-op. Likely the rest of it was simply to do my shopping in the Co-op. Anyway, when the bus broke down and we had to get off and wait for the next, I felt as though I might do less well by being later in the Co-op café. On reflection, I realised it was not necessarily so - in fact I might do better later as it might be less busy - and what the basis was of my feeling was simple urgency without working things out. This sense of urgency which (as I say) I had in Spades when I was not on any dopamine-blocking medication derives from, just so, the high levels of dopamine being transmitted in my brain. In the past (not on the medication) I rushed to get things done without any pause for comparing possibilities - more efficient ways of getting the things done - or for consideration whether the things needed doing at all. The things I rushed to get done had to do with basic notions I had what I might be stymied in, and if I suffered frustration and especially in cases - and this possibly included all cases where I came upon any impediment - where I suspected I was being deliberately thwarted by human agency, I became more concerned with the things to be done and more urgent about getting them done. The most usual cases where I felt deliberately thwarted involved the computer systems I used, and I suppose this fact arose from the complexity that computer systems have (making me suspect some human agency must be behind the complex things going wrong, I mean). Simpler things going wrong - a bus breaking down or a train meeting a hold-up - I thought in all instances must be deliberately aimed at myself, but I laughed at them instead of feeling rushed. It was as though I found frustrations beneath contempt except in the complex cases, and in these I did get involved in trying to solve them or get round them.
Of most concern to me was the idea - arising from natural computer malfunction or less-than-perfect system performance, I now see (and mainly arising from faulty reading from or writing to optical discs) - that my computer records might be subject to loss or theft. I have explained recently the ideas I used to have - which still persist although in a more theoretical sense than before - about keeping a record of my activities and especially the activity in my mind (a diary in fact) as a means of preserving them in a sort of immortality. Well, my concern with records of this type was what led to the concern I had about losing my records this concern rising to great heights of urgency if there was any indication I was 'under attack' and subject to deliberate loss say through theft. The outcome of this urgent concern was my making many backups on DVD of anything I did on the computer, and sometimes it was several backups of the same thing - slightly altering from hour to hour - through a single day.
I have recently found motivation to begin again to make backups to DVD and leaving aside whether to do so is the right thing or the wrong thing, I am sure this re-found motivation arises from my being on a lower dosage of the Risperdal. The things I do seem more of interest (to myself) and better worth recording against loss, so that I can reconstitute records - and specifically it was an image appearing on my website in the recent instance - if they have become degraded or (I suppose) lost completely.
I will speak of something else which has been in my mind. I have since I last uploaded a diary entry to Blogger written two documents on the computer both related to programs I was writing (or was thinking of writing). These are the only documents anything like diary entries I have created. What I'm thinking is if I don't put them in order in my Blogger blog, what becomes of my notion of preserving my doings through the fact of diaried doings being read and thereby passing through the mind of miscellaneous readers? I suppose the answer is that nowadays I do a lot of stuff which does not get diaried so - unless I am able to get back to the state I was in on no medication (of typing-up stuff several times a day and whatever was going through my mind) - why worry?
Having got onto the subject of what I do with my time, I will say that one of the categories of things I spend time doing - on the computer because I enjoy the physical fact of using the computer - are surveys. With these survey companies you rack up points and when you have so many they pay you a small amount or give you a shopping voucher. But it takes a lot of time and attention for only small reward so while the payment is a sweetener a major part of it is the mental activation of reflecting on your answers. I will say that in the past when on no medication questions arose in my mind from myself but coming with such little effort that they appeared to originate from outside myself, these questions making life seem very interesting. I used to send my written-down thoughts - answers to my own questions, as it were - to politicians and imagined they did not fall on deaf ears (but suspected the Civil Servants did not like the communications, mainly that is to Tory MPs). I now know my thoughts in answer to these surveys do not fall on deaf ears (because I receive payment for doing it) even though my 'thoughts' are aggregated with many others and have statistical effect only. But the point is, it's the same sort of thing I'm doing, that is sending my reflections and opinions and feeling it is worthwhile to do it.

Tuesday 15-May-12

15/05/12 19:36 [Tuesday]
I did not do what I said with Colin-Packard: instead I have reconstituted partition 1 from the Nero BackItUp backup of it stored on partition 2. This means the suspect Vista is still on partition 2 and what I am now thinking of doing is getting rid of it by re-formatting partition 2. The reason I had an operating system on partition 2 was that I thought it was necessary in order to run BackItUp to back-up partition 1, but with the experience I have now gathered it is clear BackItUp can run simply from a CD. If I re-format partition 2 the boot menu asking for a choice between Windows 7 (on partition 1) and Vista will still appear (because - and I understand these matters better now than ever before - the boot partition is partition 1 since that was the first partition with any operating system on it) but I think I know enough to be able to edit it to disappear.
I recovered the Irish Vaio in a similar way using BackItUp based on the files storing the copy of partitions 1 to 3 which I created by taking the hard drive out of the Vaio and using the docking station I have mentioned several times. I now know that I didn’t need to take the hard drive out: I could have backed-up the system partitions using BackItUp running off a CD. The recovery has gone according to plan except that the Recovery partition has ceased to be invisible and has been allocated the letter H:.

The reason I recovered the Irish Vaio was the failed install of Nero 9 and I have yet to make a repeat attempt to install that software.

15/05/12 20:05

I was on a train recently and this poster took my attention. What I find jarring is the appearance of two sentences the same but not quite identical:

• DO NOT step onto any rails
• DO NOT step onto ANY rail

Similarly in the one place cables are called cables and in the other place they are called wires.

(I cannot discover how to get this image round the right way.)  

Wednesday 09-May-12

09/05/12 06:41 [Wednesday]
In the course of trying to find a backup from 2009 of the website image I referred to on 29-Apr-12 I copied two encrypted folders made around January 2009 from DVD onto Colin-Packard (onto partition 2 in fact) that is the Packard Bell netbook computer I use. Having finished my search I have tried to delete these encrypted folders, of size about 4GB each. They got moved to the Recycle Bin but when I then tried to empty the Recycle Bin a message came up saying certain files with unrecognisable names (at least one beginning with $) could not be deleted as they were being used by some program. The outcome is that the Recycle Bin appears empty (so that it cannot be further emptied) but it is occupying about 8GB which I could do with freeing up.
Having thought about this this past night - this disturbing my sleep and causing me to get up very early - I conclude that the files in question, that is versions in the Recycle Bin of the big files I had deleted, had been locked by having a particular flag set in their entries in the index by a rogue program. Because this flag is not expected to be set for files in the Recycle Bin - because if the file is locked it means it is in use and cannot at that stage be moved to the Recycle Bin - trying to completely delete the files in emptying the Recycle Bin produces anomalous results, that is the files disappear from listings but still reside on the hard disk occupying space. I have had this type of problem in the past and concluded the files ‘secreted’ in the Recycle Bin were being retained in the hidden form for later retrieval by somebody ‘spying’ on me, that is retrieval either by illicit upload on connecting to the internet or by physically obtaining the hard disk after I had got rid of that computer (often in the past by giving it away to one of Dawn’s children). Some support for this suspicion derives from the fact that a hard disk was removed from a laptop left in the house which was Dawn’s in Worksop in August 2005 and stolen. Thinking about this now it is impossible to think up any reasonable explanation why the hard disk might have been stolen but not the entire laptop, other than by conjecturing that the information stored on the hard disk was what was wanted. Then again it is impossible to believe people authorised by the Department of Health would steal a hard disk and I can’t imagine who other than the ‘Department of Health’ or a related body would be interested in my ‘information’. The way I used to think was that I must be in some legal thrall to ‘the State’ so that what I thought of as my own was not in simple truth my own but was subject to the whims of my ‘Guardians’. (Sorry about all the inverted commas but they seem absolutely necessary.) This way I had of thinking came about since I was deprived of freedom and in thrall through several years of the 1980s, and subject to the whims of Armond who signed detention orders and the whims of those he represented (because he personally had no specific interest in me). I took the view that there was no point in my making an effort to get back to work because at any time without forewarning I might be seized again and conveyed away to detention. To treat people who are sensitive in the way they are treated when they are suddenly taken away to a mental hospital is bound to produce exaggerated reactions of this type, surely. Possibly Armond was a particularly bad culprit in that I was suddenly seized - literally seized that is clamped by the arms of ambulance-men - and taken away the first time on that Tuesday in November 1980, without any prior discussion or suggestion to me that I might need to go into hospital. When I was taken away - again on a Tuesday - in September 2010 it was slightly better. I did not need to be seized as I knew that if they said I had to go then I had to go, and I was allowed time to get my things together (including even my netbook laptop although the Social Worker involved had his doubts). To be honest the way I think is I was better treated in 2010 because a police officer was involved throughout, and it was he who said I could have time to collect my things and to make sure to lock the place up properly.
Thinking that what appeared to be my own was not in truth my own led to my giving up any attempt to conserve money in 2009-2010 so that I wasted a very large quantity. I also fell into the difficulties I had with my home insurance when I allowed it to lapse, thinking ‘the State’ was responsible for looking after me even if the bungalow I lived in fell down or was otherwise destroyed.
To get back to the fault on the computer which has developed recently reminding me of the same fault in past years: I cannot tell whether the illicit program which set the flag on those files for the Recycle Bin which could not be deleted ran on partition 1 - Windows 7 Starter Edition as it came originally with this netbook - or on partition 2 - the Vista I installed myself from a source which I have long had suspicions about. I remark though that I have had other problems with the partition 2 Vista, for example when I plugged-in the hard disk docking station I was using to make a copy of the system partitions from the Irish Vaio.
What I am intending to do is reinstall Colin-Packard from the recovery DVDs and then - I believe having had experience with Nero BackItUp I can do this - backup the system partition without installing Vista or any other operating system but simply using Nero BackItUp running from a CD. I must say recovering the system by copying back the system partition using Nero BackItUp is a quick process even though making the backup in the first place takes two hours or so.
I mention that as part of this project I have tried to install Nero 9 on the Irish Vaio, but the install hung up at 13% and I had to shut the computer down leaving the system possibly in an unstable condition from the part-install. Why the Nero 9 did not install I do not know as I’m sure I have used Nero 9 previously on the Irish Vaio, but it’s another anomaly to annoy me and cause me to have suspicions what the basis of the failure might be.