A dweller on the threshold

After breakfast the doors were opened and it was as one man stumble stumble trip all fall down. All over the grounds littered like corpses patients were lying around sleeping on the lawns. Shock treatment at the time was almost standard for new admissions and there weren't many medicines available, also it was common practice to prescribe very high doses.

After saying grace, food was more than enough and not bad at all. You could even ask for tobacco. Oddly, BB tobacco and newspaper has a very pleasant smell. I wasn't smoking at the time.

There were stories and stories as many as you want or wish. A world-class scientist was admitted the man played chess, for entertainment he played blindfold to show-off and he beat anybody. This is rare but you do find it. He and Peter made friends I asked him why, he just said “he knows many things” and Peter was teaching him the gospel. The man claimed to have proved scientifically that “God could exist”. Rather strange- one would think that it doesn't need proof. As simple logic.

This Peter guy had asked me some things right in the beginning, my first night there, he said to me the doctors can help me and clearly he had similar experiences and beliefs he said I should tell them these things that they could be trusted. I asked him are they Christian? He said they are. So when I saw my doctor and asked, he answered yes, he regards himself as a Christian and I felt I had no further cause for doubt.

I had been allowed to have a Bible which was to me an amazing thing I was incredibly grateful. My mother also lent me her expensive portable cassette player. A family friend had sent me a lot of Van Morrison tapes they were just absolute magic.

Seclusion

This is a lot worse than what it sounds. It is really really hard and I feel it's terribly cruel.

There is a little window in a slot like a post box and the door is locked with a steel bolt. When they have to open the door they clack the bolt open, and clack it closed, a few times and hard. This I believe is to see if the patient is aggressive and whether it's safe to open by first provoking a reaction.

It was not uncommon for a door to be broken down.

I've wondered a lot why it is the doors open to the outside because they were broken down from the inside. If that door opened to the inside it would simply not be possible to break it down from inside but I think it must be it could be difficult and even dangerous to open the door into the cell if the guy is inside.

A big man they often put into that seclusion was called “koning van die wêreld” (king of the world) everybody called him that the patients and staff too. Not very kind.

I didn't see this but was told and believe the story: They said that the staff on night duty sometimes promised him a cigarette if he would agree to come out peacefully and co-operated and let them give him an injection. He consented quite meekly, he came out and was given the injection with the strongest of the other patients to hold him down. Subsequently just thrown back in without any smoke or cigarette. This was apparently quite a regular thing and he fell for it each time.

Outside in the garden one day while it was being watered he played in the wet flower beds trampling in the mud chuckling happily laughing and stuffing mud in his ears. Why on earth he did that I don't know. He was helped away and led away hurriedly and anxiously by some of the ward staff. When he started banging and shouting later that night it was quite clear that he was going to break down that door.

These practices specifically have been abandoned. Even the design and plan of newer buildings is totally different. Things in general are handled in a much more humane and professional manner.

Soldiers

Pete's story actually sounded quite plausible- it had to do with his family, he said his uncle wanted to murder him and he was there for protection.

A very strong handsome young man that had just come back from the border war. Always marching, everywhere, with a green beret. He'd actually managed to recruit a platoon for his army and he was marching them around every day as military training. He was the supreme commander of AUSFOG– Armed Universal Special Forces of God.

An old school friend Mr Adams was visiting once while he had his army on parade. “Left-right left-right left-right, left, left, left!” “Troop!!" Most of the people there were seriously deluded. He didn't get along so well with the staff and the last I saw he was marching to the high security ward in pyjamas beret and all, with company. I've asked around and no-one who knows what happened to him. Well one thing's for sure the man has courage I think he's fearless.

State mental hospital

This was around 25 years ago. As far as medicine goes things were still quite crude. Shock treatment was the norm rather than exception as well as very high doses of medicine. As if the job was to set a person harmless so that he would no longer be a problem for anyone and to society and could be sent off to his family. These days everyone recovers to a greater or lesser degree.

Still, and this I must state emphatically: I did benefit from the treatment and especially in the long run, over time.

It seemed there were few black patients I think they were treated badly and there were separate wards. Some were working in the gardens. Those days the gardens were very well kept the grounds were beautiful. I've been told that some worked in the kitchens and so on.

There are big workshops there some chronic patients- artisans- were working there for as ridiculous as a packet of cigarettes a week. This was mostly white patients.

Black people had it hard I think they had a terrible time. It seemed almost as if they disappeared. As far as race goes obviously things are radically different now and perhaps surprisingly it works very well there are hardly ever fights or incidents race related. People just simply accept each other I know of no serious incidents.

Times have changed. The present nursing personnel especially are almost saint-like in their tolerance of racial insults and such and as if all in a day's work. They are academically qualified professionals. All of them have proper tertiary training many have university degrees that specialise in psychiatric care. Exactly the same goes for male nurses and in general most personnel are very dedicated. The nursing staff are mostly coloured and black people now, as well as half the doctors, and many too are women.

In the past there was certainly not real understanding from society nor much compassion, the staff (then pronounced 'stuff') jobs attracted mostly brutal simpletons not academically qualified in any way in fact I think very few had even completed high school. They were really more of warders than anything else and apparently chosen for brawn, strength and stupidity.

Things have really improved a great deal since then, the 1980s, but even so I was helped and could soon function meaningfully in society again. Not long even before say up to the 1950s they said if you went in through those gates nobody heard of you again.

In my opinion, today it is worthy the name Medical Hospital.

Still the music plays

To me it was soon a great relief to be in the hospital I'd been heavily burdened my load was too much to bear. I realised that the things that had laden me so were not so terribly important as I'd thought I just surrendered I gave it all to God. And still the music played. The Bible I had and which I can hardly understand really, still it was my guide and my salvation.

So when I left there I knew there would be a long road ahead and so many dangers, so much pain and all of many sufferings, but that I would overcome and survive. I had now seen enough to know. There would be such hardship so much unexpected and unforeseen on this spiritual journey, and yet still more to come. I had come down from the ivory tower.