£5.00
175 in stock
By Amanda Maclachlan
ISBN: 978-1-84991-588-5
Published: 2011
Pages: 242
Key Themes: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mental Health, Psychosis
Description
Badger Hospital is science fiction fantasy. The truth about what happened to the asylums is too boring to write about. I worked in Brockhall hospital when it was closing during the eighties. Brockhall was a hospital for mentally handicapped people, or, to use the present day politically correct terminology, people with learning difficulties. Mainly they were just homeless people who nobody wanted. Badger hospital is fictional and houses those who many people dare not even mention, I.e. witches, warlocks, vampires and aliens. It is closed as per government policy with the other asylums in the country. Please don’t have nightmares. Whether you want to believe witches, warlocks, vampires and aliens exist is up to you. Personally I believe. I believe in Santa Claus and fairies. What if the government had a secret hospital these people were sectioned in? I have always had a wild imagination.
I hope you enjoy my story. Thinking of my ex-colleagues at Brockhall, I dedicate this book to their hard work and to their tireless dedication to duty, as well as the patients. It is also dedicated to my parents who suffered in silence, raising me as an inquisitive child who always asked too many questions. ‘Why?’ I would ask my dad, ‘Why is the sky blue? What are clouds made of? Who is God? Where is he? What are we made of?’ I was always giving my parents a headache. However, they persevered and raised me to adulthood. For that I am always extremely grateful. Any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.
About the Author
Amanda Maclachlan was born in 1968 and has heard voices since as far back as she can remember. She remembers as a very small child her diddy men on the wallpaper talking to her. She also always had visions or daydreams. Her horrified mother told her never to mention it to anyone or they would lock her up and throw away the key. Of course mothers are always right. Amanda passed her exams at school, and then a Careers adviser suggested that she volunteer for the Barnardo’s summer play scheme. This is a respite service for children with disabilities. She ended up doing her, what was then called, mental handicap nursing. It was only when she got to Brockhall, an old asylum where she did her training, that Amanda became aware that hearing voices and having visions was not normal and in fact a mental health condition. Up to this point she had assumed that hearing voices was normal it was just rude to mention it. Actually many a so called ‘normal’ person has confided in Amanda that they hear voices but wouldn’t tell anybody.
She talked to many of the patients ambling around the hospital. Many of them had been given frontal lobotomy’s which to Amanda’s utmost relief had been banned. The psychiatrists allowed Amanda to practice as a nurse for as long as she was useful to them. However after the hospital closed she admitted herself to a psychiatric unit after someone spiked her drink. They have ruined her life trying to ‘cure’ her ever since. Amanda likes her voices, they comfort and reassure her. However the medical profession strive to make everybody average in every respect. Amanda is and always will be against the overprescribing of drugs, and particularly disagrees particularly with the right of psychiatrists, or any doctor to force drugs and treatments on people against their will.
Book Extract
Childhood Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia; when does it start? Adulthood, they always say; modern day psychiatrists blame cannabis abuse. Grace did not take cannabis, nor did her parents. Psychiatrists don’t know everything, it seems. Actually it starts from the first minute you are born. Most people have it in various forms. What’s wrong with hearing voices in your head? Now childhood and adult schizophrenia stem from an enquiring, intelligent mind. It is not a split personality as most people think. Dual personality disorder is something different altogether. Schizophrenia is not a stabbing disease. It is not even a disorder. Telepathy is very common. Churches would say schizophrenics are in contact with demons. So what if they are? What’s wrong with demons?
Grace came home from a hard day at play school. Later she went to bed, but she was scared of the dark. Mummy left the landing light on so she wouldn’t be frightened. In the struggling, orange, half-light, three-year-old Grace watched the Diddy Men move across the wallpaper. They trundled their little wheelbarrows to and fro without a care in the world, yet with an intensity of purpose that was both perplexing and enthralling. The inanimate images brought to life could have been so disturbing, so frightening, but to Grace they were comforting, if a little confusing. She stared at them, intently perplexed. Were they really moving or was it a trick of the light? Were they really speaking to her, or was it all in her mind? They spoke to her with reassurance and authority. ‘Everything’s all right, ignore the bullies at play school. Grace, go to sleep.’
As she closed her eyes a wave of peace washed over her. Those stupid bullies will go to hell, she thought to herself. It was unacceptable behaviour. Actually she didn’t feel much pain, they were more of an annoyance. She did not want to play with them ever again.
Her legs hurt, she wriggled them in annoyance. Growing pains, her mother always called them. She drifted off into a fitful sleep. She dreamed she was standing on a cliff edge. She was terrified. Suddenly her terror reached new heights as a man dressed in a black cloak appeared and pushed her over the edge. She fell. Fell… Fell, into the eternal, unknown, terrifying darkness. As she reached what her dreaming mind told her was the end of the trip, the bone crushing agony of a certain death, she awoke screaming.
Perhaps it was a foreboding of the world of adulthood—her adulthood? The Diddy Men watched over her as she slept.
Later she would enter the dog-eat-dog world where standing on others’ heads and dreams in a never-ending struggle to do better than everyone was prized above all else. Kindness was viewed as weakness and vulnerability was exploited. It was survival of the fittest; the strongest always ruled the day, the loudest voice was always heard, life is a constant battle of Good against Evil. Armageddon is always present, it never goes away. Shadows in the half-light formed monsters to haunt her. Grace hid under the bedclothes. She was three years old. A child, her whole life lay ahead of her. She was to be pushed through various schools of learning. The Diddy Men smiled at her. They knew something she didn’t… Grace said goodnight to the Diddy Men once more and then she went back to sleep.
She had talked to her mummy once about the Diddy men. Mummy became hysterical. ‘For Gods sake don’t tell anyone’ she said. ‘They will lock you away for life’
Thus Grace’s voices remained a secret for the rest of her childhood.
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