A Sunday supplement magazine, published in March this year, on Mental Health fell into my mail slot. As tired as I was on Sunday afternoon I read it cover to cover. It is through this magazine I learned about the ground breaking work and compassionate approach of Dr. Rufus May, a young Clinical Psychologist and former psychiatric patient. There are many articles written by him on the Internet, a number of interviews too. And within all of what he describes, he retains a sense of humour. This publicity stunt reflect that.
August 2006: As a teenager with schizophrenia he saw the mental health system brutalise patients. He became a doctor to change things from within. Now he is pushing a bed from London to Brighton.
Dr Rufus May and a group of fellow campaigners will tomorrow start pushing a bed from Brighton to London to raise awareness of the forced use of drugs and ECT in psychiatric hospitals. The bed, complete with a dummy patient, will be chased by a giant syringe. There will also be an ECT machine offering free “treatments” to the general public.
Rufus May is an inspiration. As are Marius Romme and Sandra Escher in their work on “making sense of voices”.
The Hearing Voices Network
http://www.hearing-voices.org/
a self-help group, also offer some great advice to voice hearers.
Thanks Ray. This is a good link and I may post on it in the future. There is also a good booklet about hearing voices by MIND. I’ll have to look that one up some time.