Karen's Story

Karen and Deb have had experience of Mental Health Services from both sides. Both were nurses who found themselves eventually receiving services. Between them, they faced some difficult times, but they met each other while receiving their therapy, and a combination of creative therapy and their friendship has given them a massive boost on the road to recovery. This is their story…

Deb: “I was abused for the first 19 years of my life. I went to Oxford to study in 1988, but had a break down and ended up in hospital. I was treated as though the abuse that I remembered was all in my head, just made up. I was discharged after six weeks and was given no support to find a place to live or any way to get on with life. In 1991, thinking I’d recovered, I came to Warwickshire to do my Psychiatric Nurse training. I actually first met Karen when I was doing this training.

During this time, more and more memories kept coming back. I was very deeply depressed, and after I had been working as a qualified nurse for a year, I had to go off sick.

I had some counselling and support, but the people I’d worked with and trained with treated me as though I’d committed some sort of heinous crime. I think they were frightened of getting depressed themselves. Since I left nursing, none of them have spoken to me, even going so far as to actively ignore me."

Karen: “When I was first ill, I was a newly qualified Staff Nurse. I was put in Lee House, but because I was a nurse, and had worked there, they transferred me to Walsgrave Hospital. I didn’t know anyone there, no one came to visit me, and all my friends didn’t want to know.

I was in and out of hospital for a long time. Because of this I became quite institutionalised, I never learnt how to cope on my own and had dependency issues."

Deb: “I feel that depression and mental illness happen to a lot of people, and shouldn’t be stigmatised, especially not by people that specifically work with mental illness.”

Karen: “Being treated locally is so important. If you are sent out of your normal area, then it is a long way for people to come and visit. You’ve got no one around you.

Deb and I met again two years ago when we were both doing Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT)* at the Pines Psychotherapy Department in St. Michael’s Hospital.”

Deb: “At first I was told by psychotherapists that I was limited to what services I could have, but I was able to access the DBT service, and got involved with an art group at Rethink’s Old Bank. Through a combination of the therapy, and the great support I’ve got from the workers at the art group (that I now help to run), I have a much better quality of life, and my life is just so much better than I was ever told it could be.

When I started, Karen started a couple of weeks after me. Because we were taking the same bus, backward and forward, we became closer.”

Karen: “I also started going to the Old Bank Resource Café, which is run by Rethink, and began to volunteer in the kitchen there. Because of that, and the help from the DBT service, I am looking into using my nursing skills to volunteer at the Rehab Hospital, and looking into other volunteering opportunities as well.

DBT has had its ups and downs, and has been very hard work, but I have learnt skills to cope better with the problems I had, for a better, more fulfilling life. I am now so much better and a much more confident person.

The friendship has also had its ups and downs, because of the nature of the illness, but as our health improves, our friendship also gets stronger and stronger.”

 

*Dialectical Behavioural Therapy (DBT) combines elements of other therapies to regulate people’s emotions, and involves concepts of distress tolerance, acceptance and mindful awareness, based on meditation.