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A long-time mental health nurse describes his career, which spanned several decades from the early 1970s, and the changes that he witnessed during that time. The world of mental health care was beginning to struggle away from the concept of large asylums, towards the community care and much smaller units that we now know. The author was unaware of these changes at first, but he was immune from none of them, and all made an impact upon his professional life. Buddleia Dance on the Asylum is Stephen Burrow s personal metaphor for the efforts of all those concerned - staff, patients and institutions alike to adapt to the changes and provides a fascinating piece of social history. I found the print a little small and many of the paragraphs a little long, but this book can be read in small bite-sized chunks. That is no bad thing, for a volume that invites us implicitly to consider the implications of our history in mental health care, and what that history might mean for us as individuals. --The Self Publishing Magazine
Buddleia Dance on the Asylum is Stephen Burrow's excellent account of his time working in the 1970s as a Porter, and later as a nurse. It features comment on the community of the hospital and the idiosyncracies of the institution, as well as experience of interactions with many staff members and patients. Published in 2010, this is most detailed account of Cane Hill available to date. --Simon Cornwell - Crane Hill Hospital
Buddleia Dance on the Asylum is Stephen Burrow's excellent account of his time working in the 1970s as a Porter, and later as a nurse. It features comment on the community of the hospital and the idiosyncracies of the institution, as well as experience of interactions with many staff members and patients. Published in 2010, this is most detailed account of Cane Hill available to date. --Simon Cornwell - Crane Hill Hospital
Product Description
This is an authentic account of a professional s experience of the mental health industry beginning in the early nineteen seventies when, as a young man from a disturbed background, he fails to reach university and seeks employment as a porter in a mental hospital. The hospital community seems the equivalent of a sprawling, international family: culturally diverse, eccentric, benevolent and dysfunctional. The callow youth embraces this representation of a family and its inimitable characters, and the illuminating field of mental disorder, in what he comes to own as a personal sense of asylum. He embarks on a mental nurse training despite the controlled and impoverished conditions so detrimental to the patients lives and recovery. He then experiences the evolving, civilising developments which slowly transform the staff-centred regime and which eventually leads to the closure of the hospital for good. Within the hospital s grounds, a modern forensic unit is built in its stead. He eventually, turns to the discipline of psychotherapy in order to work more therapeutically but this only accentuates the dilemmas in current mental health care. Throughout the journey, the wild shrub of the Buddleia is a metaphor for the striving institutions, staff, patients and himself, trying to survive and thrive in an inhospitable world
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A beautifully written, well researched book that gives an accurate account of the old "lunatic asylum". Anyone who has worked in one of these institutions can identify aspects described in the book. I thoroughly recommend this book.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I would recommend reading this book. This author has a good idea for detail. He gives a gritty and vivid view of a world that fortunately few of us get to see. The descriptions of buildings, people and situations are well-drawn and feel authentic. The dialogue is particularly believable. The book creates a dark world which is occasionally lit by acts of human warmth which give cause for hope. This gives an insight into the sometimes brutal treatment of institutional care.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Excellent, well written memoir of a psychiatric nurse's experience of changes in UK mental health care fron 1970's to the present. Highly recommended.
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