Diana's Story
I was diagnosed with bi-polar in 1992. At first I was only given medication to...
My Journey with Fanon
Caroline tells her story
Fanon has helped me to become independent, vocal and involved.
I grew up unable to make friends, feeling isolated and being bullied by people because I kept talking to the voices in my head. This made me feel like an outcast. The older I got the worst my problem became. Things came to a halt for my parents as matters were taken out of their hands by the Mental Health Team when I first tried to kill myself. No one asked me why I did what I did. They classified me with a mental health problem. Today looking back I know I didn’t really want to die I just wanted to stop the voices from hurting my head. My parents started blaming each other about whose side of the family I had inherited my illness from, they then started blaming me because I was bullied at school. I then spent most of my teenage years in and out of a Psychiatric Hospital.
I got myself a job, for a number of years life became more manageable. Working took some of the loneliness away, I felt useful. Then things started to get on top of me and my condition worsened. I would spend six months in Hospital and two months at work, then I would fall ill again and go back to hospital. This went on for a number of years until my illness robbed me of my career. I was made medically unfit and retired from my job. I thought I had lost everything and kept going in and out of hospital for the years that followed. I was very angry, unable to express what was going on for me this resulted in my behaviour being not acceptable. “Difficult attention seeker, aggressive, hard to work with” was how the mental health staff labelled me. I was passed around from pillar to post, no-one wanted to work with me. I told a black Social worker who took time to listen and try and understand my behaviour and this is where my journey began. She noticed that my cultural needs were not being met and found out about Fanon. I had never engaged in any other day service before.
The SW would take me to Fanon and stayed with me. We did this for weeks. Then she would take me there and a staff member from Fanon would take me to the tube station. This progressed to my SW putting me on the train and meeting a Fanon staff member at the other end. At Fanon I could only relate to my key-worker and would only talk to her, if she was off sick or on annual leave I would not attend the centre.
With time and help and patience, and support I was able to feel comfortable with other members of staff at Fanon. Now after a couple of years I am able to go to and from unaccompanied. I found Fanon helpful because I thought they could understand my cultural needs and was able to explain this to my care team. Being at Fanon has helped me to become independent, vocal and involved. I am less isolated and have a good relationship with staff and other service users. Fanon has also helped me to be creative so I now attend mainstream College where I am in my second year of an interior design course.
I have volunteered my time at Fanon and in Scotch Bonnet, I have sat on interviewing panels to recruit new staff, to enjoy giving something back to the service, Fanon has helped me a lot.
Caroline