Episode 5: Mental Health Past Caring

Episode 5 is here and we're taking a broad look at mental health nursing. We've got a real range of perspectives on this one.

We start with an interview with mental health nurse Simon Arday and Peer Involvement Worker Kojo Bonsu. Kojo shares his experiences of the mental health system, both as a service user and an employee. And Simon speaks about what it means to be a mental health nurse. In this conversation Simon and Kojo are incredibly generous with their experiences and expertise; we cover parity of esteem, racial profiling, problems with the current system and so much more.

I also talk to health care historian Dr Claire Chatterton, who I've had the pleasure of working with for a number of years at the RCN. Claire specialises in the history of mental health nursing and takes us back to the nineteenth century. We explore what a working day was like for a nurse in an asylum, the age-old tension between care and control, and what we can learn from this history.

And my final guest on this episode is the wonderful Sarah Carpenter. Sarah is an artist who makes work exploring her own lived experience. She's also an experienced collaborator, working with others in the health care system to create art. She tells us about her practice, including her 2020 project HOLD for International Day of the Nurse and Midwife at Maudsley Hospital.

The Past Caring podcast is produced by Natalie Steed.

Here are few links for more info:

Claire refers to author Diana Gittins, here's her book on Severalls Hospital: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203029299/madness-place-diana-gittins

Sarah Carpenter's website http://www.sarahcarpentercreative.co.uk/hold.html

and Fourth Wall Folkestone https://www.fourthwallfolkestone.co.uk/