still flowering in our garden 30Sep18, some solitaires!

back garden:

wild orange Poppy

Lavender. Begonias.

Lobelias.

Hydrangea. Cyclamen & Primulas to plant out.

more Lavender beside Primulas

berries:

front garden:

Pansies

Chrysanthemums in the middle!

Roses

more Roses

Gladioli type flowers

Potentilla

Begonias.

Veronica

Lavender

solitaires:

Hypericum

Antirrhinum

another wild orange Poppy

red Poppy hiding!

white Sweet Pea

We've been having some cold weather in my birthday month of September (I was 66 years young on the 28th) so I didn't think there would be so many flowers still surviving.

Here is the birthday card from my youngest son Daniel!

Ed Muirhead | Dundee Culture Podcast

'Sexual safety on mental health wards' Report Sept18 @CareQualityComm England

'Sexual safety on mental health wards' Report, September 2018, Care Quality Commission, England
 

Warriors ~ CoCo and the Butterfields

'In the hands of others: the nightmare begins' Lin Cochrane #Psychosis Journal

'In the hands of others: the nightmare begins' Lin Cochrane; Psychosis Journal

Pages 225-227 | Received 02 Feb 2018, Accepted 02 Feb 2018, Published online: 04 Apr 2018

link to journal

From first page:

"With the little insight and foresight I had at the time, I saw the life I once had and appreciated become endless years of control and power.  And the medication and the fear of the medication.  The endless trials and various types of medication.  The continual side effects of all the drugs I have been trialled on, which over the past 38 years has cost me my physical well-being, the loss of friends and the worst isolation I have ever had to bear up to date.  Then, at the age of 29, none of this was apparent to me, except for a gut-wrenching feeling that nothing would ever be the same again."

my tweets about the religion of psychiatry and the cult of clinical psychology

Engaging with Dr David Healy and others this morning (a lecture):

I don't get paid to give therapy

Dec14 I was bullied off this group. I met with Gumley in his office after 4Jul CUSP group & was told that when I left Dec14 it was very hard for him. Well it was very hard for me. I don't get paid. He said I wasn't "more than". I responded saying I wasn't "less than". https://t.co/aaeWpQIsM5

— Chrys Muirhead (@ChrysMuirhead) November 9, 2017

ClinPsy male academics in Scotland are angry; I've felt the brunt of it; not pleasant; I don't get paid to give therapy, to put up with angry men; if they paid me £50/hr then I might consider it https://t.co/LtSF59BFmY

— Chrys Muirhead (@ChrysMuirhead) April 15, 2018

I don't get paid to give therapy

— Chrys Muirhead (@ChrysMuirhead) September 12, 2018

why do psychotherapists encourage people to kneel at their feet?

Or maybe the question should be, why don't they discourage it?  

I've witnessed this on a number of occasions, in person and on social media, where therapists, clinical psychologists, psychotherapists and the like make pronouncements as if they were gods, expecting their followers to obey without question.

I first saw this in around 2005/6 at an event in Kirkcaldy where a Professor of psychotherapy and his wife gave a presentation then afterwards sat on chairs at the front of the large reception room, people came to speak with them, kneeling on the floor at their feet.  I thought: what's going on there?  What's that all about?  Couldn't understand it.  Have seen a lot more of it since, working in mental health matters, and not just with "therapists".  I saw it at the Minorities Conference 5 July 2016 after Lucy Johnstone's talk when coming back into the room and seeing a young guy at her feet and I told him to get up.  Johnstone should have told him.

Prof Gumley said I'd be in my "element" at this event; he was correct

I suspect it's to do with the psychological training giving therapists the ability to manipulate vulnerable people while also distancing themselves from the "other".  Setting them above the people they work with, believing their celebrity status and the power they have to hold an audience and peddle their wares.  

I had further dealings with the Fife psychotherapist and his wife over the years and it was useful to have seen that first engagement from afar, how they expected adulation as their due, a disrespect for those they perceived as "less than".  It helped in the 8 years of trying to be meaningfully involved as a person with "lived experience" in DClinPsy programmes at both Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities.  From 2009 when I attended a Service User Research Group at the red brick Admin building Gartnavel Hospital with Ross White and Andrew Gumley.

I can still remember that meeting, having a photographic recall.  Coming in late, the 2 academics giving "therapy" to a woman who didn't seem to be mentally well, a FT paid worker with ACUMEN, or maybe she was just taking advantage of having 2 therapists available, for free, manipulating the occasion.  I wasn't happy, the meeting was meant to be about user research and I never did get my travel expenses from White.  Of course the meeting was really about research fodder for academics, we were just a means to their end.  This pattern went on for years at both DClinPsy institutions.  It's probably still going on, ad infinitum.  A tokenistic, tick box affair.  Not my cup of tea.

4July17 leaving DClinPsy Programme

in the front row at the Minorities Conference BPS London 5Jul16

Cycling by River Tay on path to Tiso from North Inch, Perth 8Sep18

Simple Life @Ed_Sings [my Son!]

5th Dimension - Last Night I Didn't Get To Sleep At All

attachment theory, crying Mothers; leading by example, strong Mothers

I got up a bit earlier this morning to write this post as I'm off to Edinburgh for the Alliance Scotland conference on digital health and care then to Scottish Parliament to watch the First Minister speak.  Writing to make sense of it.

Upon waking I was thinking again of the (negative) influence of Professor Andrew Gumley in the field of psychosis, his Attachment Theory and Risk of Relapse dogmas which in my opinion and experience keeps in place the blaming of Mothers for mental illness and scaremongers people into staying in the system when they could be breaking free, enjoying life to the full.   It creates dependence rather than independence, and is egotistic although anyone who knows Gumley would likely say that he is a caring person.  I've not found him to be so and have been at the receiving end of his displeasure.  You might describe it as discipline from a father heart.  I don't appreciate it as a strong Mother and Grandmother.  He's not my Dad, neither is he my son.  I deserve respect for the woman I am, his equal.

Attachment theory in mental health matters, in psychosis, is a reaction and response to biological psychiatry which I can understand but don't approve of, as a survivor Mother, having overcome psychiatric treatment on 3 separate occasions, following puerperal psychosis in 1978 and 1984, then menopausal psychosis in 2002.  I did it for my family, my 3 sons, coming off the neurotoxins which had been forced into me as a voluntary mental patient.  And I've supported my 3 sons when they experienced psychosis and had to take them into psychiatric wards because there were no other choices and they needed help.  That was very tough as I knew what they would have to go through but I also knew that it had to be done.  And so I advocated for them in and out of psychiatry, caring for them, leading by example.

with my 3 Sons, Oct99 at my sister's wedding

[In the photo above my two older Sons had already been psychiatric patients, my youngest was still to go through it.]

I've not been respected by Clinical Psychology in Scotland and this grates.  I think it comes down to attachment theory dogma, a misrespresentation of family relationships and the experience of psychosis.  Which leads to the marginalisation of mothers like me who are strong, capable, independent thinkers and have survived psychosis and psychiatric treatment.  Maybe there's not many of us around who speak out but that doesn't mean we are "less than".  I really don't appreciate Gumley and his patriarchal colleagues preferring mothers who cry on their shoulders and make them feel big.  They need to start giving respect to strong Scottish Mothers who shoulder responsibilities, lead from the front and are good examples to their sons (and daughters) by living it, surviving psychosis and psychiatry.  

I will continue to protest at my treatment by Clinical Psychology in Scotland.  They are not helping the movement for positive change in Psychiatry and mental health care.  Their egos are getting in the way and need brought down to size.  Reductionism.  Have these well paid academic DClinPsy men learnt their lesson yet?  I don't know, they have gone in the huff.

with Prof Gumley 4April17 after PhD mentoring meeting Edinburgh

At this meeting with Gumley in Dr Stenhouse's office, Doorway 6 of old Medical Quad it seemed as if I was speaking to one of my sons.  Andrew behaved like a boy with his Mother.  Then upon leaving the doorway we came upon Angus McBeth and Prof Gumley went up to him, hugging him like a father.  I observed this and pondered the difference.  After this I took the selfie of us together, capturing the moment.  It brings back how I felt.  Wondering why I got the wee boy behaviour while McBeth got the father treatment.  I don't have an answer, just questions.  I didn't want hugged, don't need a father figure, I just wanted to be treated like an equal.  Surely that's not too much to ask?

Loch Leven Castle boat trip 28Aug18

my faith sustains me

I woke up this Sunday morning in my birthday month of September feeling positive, as usual, after a good night's sleep, thinking how my faith in Christ sustains me.  I'm often praising God when playing music at the PC, pop tunes from the past or more recent songs, so much to be thankful for.  I seldom play "Christian" music but that's ok, I don't need to.  

I wake up to this Bible verse on my bedside table, in cross-stitch I did in the 1990's:

Beside Monkey which I've had since a baby, photos of my boys, a crochet cross I got from somewhere.  Monkey's very well worn, his foot and hand were sewn on again by me in childhood, also his eyes, nose and mouth, I must have played with him a lot.

Here's more cross-stitch beside my computer, the Jesus oval frame was one of the first creations, maybe 1993 or thereabouts, family photos, gifts received from friends over the years, the bone china oval dish with the Tangipahoa necklace resting in it is from 1975, Aberdeen, a guest house on the King's Gate where I worked, in the last year of my husband's BSc Agriculture, when we lived in Gordon House, 27 Rubislaw Den North, married students' accommodation, mostly with international couples:

I don't attend church at present which is fine, I don't need to.  I may go back in the future, it depends.  I've got a strong faith but I'm not religious, and as a Christian of 37 years (saved on my birthday in 1981 when reading the Word of God) I find it difficult to sit in a church where the Minister isn't doing the job right, without speaking out.  I've had to sit in too many churches where men in leadership were out of order, misbehaving or making a fool of God.  I cannot put up with it any more.  

Fortunately my faith doesn't depend on church attendance. I had a faith before joining the church which is just as well, considering what I've seen and heard from "men of God".  

I'll end on a positive note!  Which is where I began, grateful for feeling so hopeful about life and the future even though the last 10 years have been particularly challenging.  At times I didn't think I'd survive but I'm nearly 66 and looking forward to my 70's 😊.  Bring it on ....

Enjoying The Proclaimers Angry Cyclist album: