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When the NAMH was inaugurated in 1946 its founders did not conceive it as a protest movement. It was a pioneering organisation in the field of mental health ?in education, child guidance, residential services, mental after-care and the provision of a casework advisory service. True, it has always been concerned with policy issues and, over the years it has, through its evidence to expert committees and its direct line to successive ministers, had a considerable influence on the shaping of the mental health services.
We were certainly not created as a protest movement but (without reducing our pioneering and service roles) we have become one. Whether we ‘achieved’ this status or had it ‘forced upon us’ is a matter for debate.
The ‘Save the Paddington Day Hospital’ campaign was an object lesson in successful protest. It began with a few angry staff and patients who were appalled at the prospect of a unique psychiatric therapeutic community being swallowed up and its identity lost by absorption into the new psychiatric unit at St. Mary’s Hospital. There were some who thought that bannerwaving and ‘sit-ins’ might do the trick. But the leaders of the protest movement were sensible enough to involve GPs, social workers, MPs and MIND/NAMH at an early stage.
The three speakers billed to address a public protest meeting?Dr Faith Spicer, Dr Malcolm Pines and myself?were all involved in MIND/NAMH. And over 800 people turned up to add their weight? deluding many who had benefited from treatment at the PDH and doctors and social workers who had been able to refer their patients and clients to it. The MIND Campaign was able to call a press conference, to advise on tactics and, with the full authority of our Council of Management, to state our case to Sir Keith Joseph, all of which helped to ensure that good sense Prevailed and the plans for closing the Day Hospital were dropped.
The fight for the establishment, near Cheltenham, of an adolescent psychiatric unit for the South-Western Regional Hospital Board was an even better example for it is the story of two pressure groups meeting head on. There were those who opposed the project?despite the fact that there was no unit in the region for young people, and that the Gloucestershire Mental Health Association and the Mental Health Trust had raised over ?30,000 to pay for the conversion of a suitable building. At first the opposition was successful and, with the help of a solicitor hired to oppose the plan, it succeeded in getting the local planning authority to refuse permission on the grounds that ‘the use of the house and land for the purpose sought would be likely to prove detrimental to the residential amenities of nearby dwellings’.
So the search began for another site?and no sooner was one found than another group was set up to block this urgently needed service. There was a petition and a Public Enquiry. People expressed ‘fears of drug peddling, the danger to local children?If there are 25 patients who will be free, we are the ones who will be behind locked doors’. Some acknowledged the need for such a unit, but ‘not in our area’.
The Association waited 13 months for the Minister to reach his decision; but they had the full backing of their own MP, Douglas Dodds-Parker (who later became chairman of the all-party mental health group in Parliament) and the NAMH. Victory again?but as the result of the delays the unit will not be open until early in 1974 and the conversion costs, originally estimated five years ago at ?30,000, has now risen to ?80,000. The extra ?50,000 will have to be paid by the taxpayer?thanks to the opposition which blocked the scheme for so long.
The support of MIND is now constantly sought in the struggle for better mental health services. A recent case hit the headlines when two women were found to have spent 50 years in a hospital for the mentally handicapped ever since, as unmarried mothers, they were sent there as ‘moral defectives’ under an Act passed in 1913. MIND immediately became involved. Then the medical and nursing staff at Stoke Park Hospital, Bristol, turned to the Bristol Association for Mental Health and to MIND to protest that inadequate funds were available to provide a decent service for mentally handicapped patients.
MIND/NAMH is in a strong position to speak up for we not only enjoy the support and involvement of the professionals in the world of psychiatry and community mental health care, but we speak from our own daily experience of steadily expanding services for the mentally disordered and of educational and preventative work. When we speak we do so with authority?? and our voice is heard by those in power.
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