Old Dog - New Tricks
May 16, 2008 by inspectorgadget
Please read this story from a great Blog. When you drop by, please mention where you came from.
She is a young woman struggling but surviving with mental health problems. She writes about her dealings with her local police officers when she was suicidal, and her relationship with them now.
I learned a lot from the plain and simple honesty with which she writes, and a lesson about how people think when we are dealing with them.
You can teach an old dog new tricks (I’m not ‘old’ by the way).
Emergency Service Bloggers - Please link to her page. Thanks.
Gadget Diversity Note: No elderly Inspectors were hurt in the writing of this post.
It is so important for more people to understand depression and mental health issues. She has written this brilliantly and it shows just how good the Police can be.
You don’t join the Police for a laugh, you join because you want to help make a difference. It sounds as though in this case they really have.
x
As an Inspector with 28years in, it was rather a surreal experience when my 70yr old father called me in a panic, saying my mother had flipped. On arrival she was completley mad. She did not recognise me and kept repeating the same phrases. None of this was expected or foreseen. I recall having to forcibly restrain my mother and drive her to the mental hospital where she was sectioned. After a month she was out and back to her normal self?!
This experience has stuck with me when dealing with MH persons as it seems possible to strike anyone.
A most sobering experience, which has opened my eyes to the issues others face.
Thank you Gadget, it is wonderfully refreshing to find these alternative points of view.
I have always tried to have an open mind and to be sympathetic and understanding with the mental health patients I deal with. Unfortunately I frequently work with people who do not share this view and feel ambulances would be employed better elsewhere.
I think the majority of the MH patients I deal with are in genuine need and that the ambulance service needs to catch up with this and deal with it accordingly.
I would also like to say I am glad she brought to peoples attention the good job the police service do. We would be lost without you guys and not enough people realise this.
Thanks Gadget for all your support. I am feeling genuinely touched tonight by everyone’s comments.
By the way, I have preordered your book on Amazon (a few weeks back now) and can’t wait until it’s released. Been enjoying your blog for ages now and seem to have caught the ‘blogging bug’.
My sister suffers from mental illness, having to deal with bouts of severe depression; suicidal tendancies and the most amazing paranoia that’s so wierd you find it hard to believe she believes it herself. Mind you she says I’m mad for ever joining the police so who’s the sane one?
I always have her in mind whenever I am called to help with sectionings and mental health issues and I have found that this has always helped me to give the best service I possibly can.
Thereandback, all I can do is echo Gadgets comments and tell you that we do care - deeply.
Yeah,
I do have a great deal of sympathy for those with mental health illnesses.
All too often, the only folk to help in any way are us, the Police.
I have had arguments with doctors who are under the impression they shouldn’t send the patient away in an ambulance for treatment, but have them locked up in our cells.
This blog isn‘t a one trick pony. By turns sympathetic, tough, frivolous, serious, daft, insightful, prejudiced and open-minded.
Gadget’s touched on many subjects before. After two days this must be a record for fewest comments. What is it about this issue that makes it so untouchable? Good on Gadget for having a warm heart, and best of luck to Thereandback.
Gadget is definitely ‘old’ by the way. But all the wiser & better for it.
Having read this post and the link, it made me think about the current way in which we are viewed in terms of the government targets etc.
‘Thereandback’ has illustrated clearly what we do by the example given and how we do it in a caring manner. The range of incidents that we are asked to deal with is huge, taking time and effort to help people and provide a service.
You cant measure that.
Dave H
The comments are over on the Blog I have linked to - all by Gadget readers and all very supportive.
Thanks for the comment.
Dave H - as the guvnor said, I think the majority of us have commented on the blog linked to rather than Gadget’s. I know I have.
Sorry, had a ‘wrong end of stick’ experience.
Mental illness seem to be treated as though it is a communicable disease, that might be caught by association; look away, don’t talk about it, not in our family, couldn’t happen to me and mine. This attitude is not dissimilar to how cancer was dealt with only a few decades ago, people suffered but it wasn’t talked about in polite company, the ‘C word’ was not mentioned.
Maybe in years to come, society will be a bit more tolerant and enlightened and supportive than it is now, but I doubt it because the bottom line is that mental illness scares the S**t out of us all, simply because like cancer, it could happen to any of us.
Ten years ago, whilst in a hostel on my way to recovery after a breakdown I’d a few “incidents” with the local force. Throughout all the time I was either in custody or in their care I couldn’t find fault with the way I was treated. As soon as it was understood that I was in the situation of that time in my life their attitude was one of calm resolve to get me to the help I needd with little fuss, or just to get me safely back home. Surrey police deserved a pat on the back for their warmth and humanity, as I was pretty messed up at that time.