Do Not Disturb - Demons Sleeping (Diary Entries)

July 1997:
We finally set off on the family summer holiday to France.  The children were just about young enough not to be embarrassed in the company of their parents but old enough to appreciate the beautiful sights and sounds of both Paris and the Cote d'Azur.   The holiday was everything you could hope for, blue skies, warm sunshine, good food, Disney rides, the perfect vacation.

It was during the Paris leg of our trip that I began to withdraw into myself and my husband had to increasingly take over the domestic end of things.  The children were having a ball and hopefully didn’t notice the growing  change in my demeanour.  I was no longer preparing the meals (we were staying in an apartment) or rinsing out our small pieces of laundry.  Existing from hour to hour was becoming exhausting.

Finally, one warm sunny afternoon while walking along one of the many beautiful Parisian streets I emotionally collapsed and broke down.  While my husband walked ahead with the children (presumably to prevent them witnessing my distress) I dragged myself along, tears streaming down my face, not caring about the passers-by who by then were probably staring sympathetically at me.   Nothing existed outside of my tortured soul.

Shortly before leaving Paris I had a dream where I was in a long black tunnel, squashed by huge iron claws and feeling the excruciating pain rack every inch of my body.

On my return from France I had a very strong urge to give this dream sequence a physical entity so on waking the following morning I drew my image of the dark tunnel which I named “Birth Tunnel”.

Less than a week back home I had my weekly psychotherapy session with my now late therapist, Alan.   The depression which I had sunk into over the past couple of months had by this time deepened but was now also accompanied by a heightened state of anxiety.

It was during the hour long session that I became quite distressed.   Crying during my sessions was nothing new but this time there was a rawness to my distress that never really existed before.  I cried in despair, shouted, thumped the walls with my fist in anger, then sat shaking, terrified I was going completely mad.  I begged Alan to help me.  He very gently suggested I should be admitted for a short while to a clinic where I could have complete rest away from life’s hectic schedule.  He then phoned my GP and explained to him my fragile state of mind.

Later in the evening my husband phoned Alan to discuss my situation with him.  He wasn’t keen on the idea of me entering a clinic, he didn’t feel it was necessary but Alan explained the necessity for me to have care with possibly short term medication to help calm me and get me through this particularly difficult time.

At around 10.00am the following morning I went to my doctor who arranged my admission to the hospital where, he assured me I would be very comfortable as it was a small private hospital whose decor was more hotel than clinic.   Later, he phoned to say I was expected at around 2.00pm.

I arrived at the single story building around 2.00pm feeling totally lost and confused.......

As a result of the heavy sedation which I received over the first three days (standard procedure) I don’t remember much of my nine day stay.  However, I do intend at some point to document the snippets which have remained with me to try and establish an overall picture of daily life in a psychiatric hospital.


© Ann Brien 2013


Above image:  Me, sometime in 2011


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The Big House

When I was a youngster sometimes I'd hear my father or someone else mention that such a person was in the "Big House" which years later I understood to mean he or she was a patient in a psychiatric hospital.  Back then people found and still are finding it difficult to discuss depression and mental illness in any form.  The hospitals were known as Lunatic Asylums for the Insane and other dreadful, frightening names, so no wonder we were scared at the very mention of them let alone the sight of them.

These institutions were huge granite or red brick buildings looming up within large high-walled areas usually containing a laundry, bakery, chapel and other smaller outbuildings. Three of our most famous Irish psychiatric hospitals, St. Brendan's Hospital (also known as Grangegorman and originally the Richmond Lunatic Asylum), St. Ita's Hospital (formerly Portrane Asylum) and St. Patrick's Hospital (originally St. Patrick's Hospital for Imbeciles) date back to between the mid-1700s and late-1800s, and, as some came into existence through either large donations from wealthy donors or Government grants, I'm sure only the finest building materials of the day were used in their construction. They've certainly withstood everything our Irish climate has thrown at them over the years, though some now are in the final stages of total disrepair.

In recent years it has been decided that these hospitals, both here in Ireland and further afield, no longer provide the proper environment or adequate accommodation required to meet the needs of the mentally ill.  Some patients are already in the process of being moved to other facilities, others, too elderly and frail both in mind and body to be disturbed, remain within the confines of what to them is home.

As a part of my research for an upcoming film in which I'll be playing a psychiatric patient I've been reading up on the care and sometimes barbaric treatments administered to patients in some of these grim institutions. At this point I hastily add not Irish ones although perhaps some of these too are not wholly exempt from blame.  I'm shocked to the core to discover the inhumane conditions these pure people had to endure in the name of healing. 

The following poem, part of which I wrote a couple of years back, is written from the viewpoint of a passer-by who has just walked through a psychiatric hospital ruins and is standing before the building questioning what really happened within its walls down through the ages. The hospital is purely fictitious.


The Big House

I stand before you asking
If your walls could speak
What horrors would they reveal.
You stare through sightless eyes
Your windowpanes once warmed by summer sun
Now shattered as the broken spirits of your long dead, forgotten inmates.

Your open doorways beckon from the storm
Creatures, winged and animal alike
As once they welcomed human souls in search of refuge from their demons.

Pills and potions were the menu of the day
And when chemicals alone could not mend the most broken minds
Temporal lobes were seared to exact the desired calm.

Your white-washed walls more befitting bovine habitation than human comfort
Now crumble piece by greying piece into the dust and fossilised bird shit.
On your few remaining iron beds manacles still dangle
Like the hanging Jesus on his Calvary cross
A grim reminder of freedom so cruelly denied.

Chimney stacks stand tall against the darkening sky
Two hundred years of desperate cries and splintered thoughts
Long carried on the wind.

Before they finally crush your wasted bones
Just let me say to those unfortunates who died within your walls
I'd like to think you left this world sensing someone cared.

No need now for barred windows for no one's left to flee your prison
Those still living seeking peace in new-found sanctuaries
Those no more at rest in dreamless sleep.


© Ann Brien 2013


Above image: St. Brendan's Hospital, Grangegorman, via Wiki.
Image used only to portray the poem's fictional hospital's state of disrepair.


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