MDF member Brian Adams is currently writing a book about his experiences with Manic Depression. Following the positive responses to his article Psychos Analysed in the September issue of In The Mood he offers us a taste of the feast to come.

In the early, pre-diagnosis, eighties talking my problem out with a psychotherapist seemed like the answer to my problems. My doctor at the time was happy to set it up. He warned me that the therapist might be a 'bit rude'.

And yes, she was something that was not nice, and so was everything else about the encounter.. in a dour room off a dour corridor in the most Eastern European looking of Cornhill's collection of asylum buildings I experienced my first and last encounter with psychotherapy.

Basically, the sessions consisted of me trying to think of important things to say while my therapist helped by staring expressionlessly at the floor somewhere - a blank, empty woman thing that communicated by repeating everything I said.

This was medicine before anaesthesia and penicillin., a barium enema was a wild week in Las Vegas compared to this. I have gifted by body for dissection - I know already what it is going to feel like. Am I making myself clear? I really did not enjoy psychotherapy.

What would it have taken to dent that psychotherapy persona she created? A fire next door maybe?

Patient: "I smell smoke!"
Therapist.- "You smell smoke today."
Patient.. "Yes, I have a good sense of smell and I do smell smoke."
Therapist: "You seem to very certain about this."
Patient: "The hospital is on fire, I think we should get out of here.--
(Sounds of fire alarms, people screaming; breaking glass, fire engines, etc. coming from outside)
Therapist.. "I'm picking up lots of special effects from you today."

But there was never a fire and after the hour-long sessions I would drive home to Peterhead wondering what she, or I, had been getting at.

It was junk. At that time in my life I was living at a hundred miles an hour and was late for everything - meetings, parties, dates, ferries, tides. I was chronically unreliable but had not recognised the state I was in. Instead I believed her suggestion that I was resisting the psychotherapeutic process.

It seemed that my illness, these crazy mood swings, was a self-inflicted thing. "Whatever is wrong it must be something pretty dark and deep," I thought. "Maybe I don't want to uncover it. Maybe I don't really want to get better at all. Aye, that's it - I need to be depressed one week and swinging from the chandeliers the next; it's some kind of escape tactic I have developed." And on the headbanging would go.

Is it possible that my therapist was just as cheesed-off with my lateness as any doctor, dentist, chiropodist, acupuncturist, tattooist would have a right to be and that instead of forgiving me or giving me a straightforward bollocking she climbed into my head with her irritation?

I came to hate that miserable room and to dislike the woman who showed more regard for the cracks 'm mental hospital linoleum than me. If she knew of the pain and confusion which was my life and of how hard I wanted the therapy to bring me an answer there was not a crack in her to show it.

Then there was the day I entered that room and noticed that she had pinned a small flower to her cardigan: a violet. She had made a mistake. Suddenly I saw the human being, the person. I saw her in the early morning sunshine stooping to pick the flower and threading the delicate stalk carefully through the close weave of her patterned Fair Isle Cardigan, decorating herself, being herself.

My eyes moved from her face to the violet then back to her face again. The face, as ever, angled downwards and to the side.

But she couldn't fool me anymore. I had guessed that the wall she pretended to be was part of the act. Before it had disturbed me but now, after seeing that sweet, natural moment with the violet, the whole thing seemed a silly, pointless, unnatural game that was achieving nothing.

I like my people engaging with me as if we were members of the same species; looking at me, if not in the eye, at least in my direction. Returning my smile is good too - even if that can be a kind of a game also. What kind of trade was this for a human being to ply and what, I wondered, did it cost her to keep it up?

I sat on the bench and from a distance watched her take in the sunshine that cut through the still bare sycamores as she strolled: coatless, through the park. She looked thoughtful and unhappy. I saw where she had probably picked the violet. Under her arm was my file.

Was this what she did to keep herself from cracking up after an hour with folk like me - take her time through the park?

She went through the gate at the far end of the park and it was to be the last I ever saw of her. Maybe she was none of the things she looked like in the park, but I was. That night I wrote a letter to her, withdrawing from the psychotherapy. She sent a kind letter back saying that she understood but she hadn't.

An ex-mental patient wrote to the Daily Mail recently about his experience of E.C.T. (electroconvulsive therapy). "After six E.C.T. sessions in two months, my long-term memory became a blur and to this day I cannot remember in sequence what I did yesterday.

I can't read books, because I can't keep in mind the page I've just read and I can no longer recall what my mother and father looked like unless I have their photographs in front of me."

My personal experience of E.C.T. is good: effective treatment for severe mania and no side effects. However I wouldn't wish to have it again because of the risks of memory and emotional damage.

Mike Harley

CARE IN THE COMMUNITY-AT WHAT COST!

Care in the Community encourages earlier discharge from hospital, and transfers some of the responsibility for treatment to the Social Services. A Befriender who was provided free of charge before November, 1999 is now charged at £6.80 per hour. Penumbra provided free 'breaks' to sufferers, and indirectly to carers, but now charge £88 per week for the service. The following crossed my mind:

1. With charges like these, who can afford to use Care in the Community?

If you know of any other services that are potentially going to be too expensive to use ... please let us know, and we may be able to provide our MSP, Brian Adam, with enough information to make a difference.