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Hello and welcome back to Pods with Nick and James. My name's Nick. This is James.
Hey there.
And today our topic is mental health. I didn't want to start with a pun on this one because
A. I don't have the creativity to think of a good one for mental health.
But B. I wanted to think about this topic as a bit more of a serious topic.
People I don't think, especially in the country we live in, take this topic as seriously as they should.
I think mental health is a universal problem.
I know back in the 10th century, 11th century, it wasn't seen as such.
It was seen as a weakness of the minority.
But I think everybody suffers from mental health issues at some point.
And people need to be free and open to discuss that.
Anyway, hi James. How are you doing?
Hi there. I would start by saying that in olden times the process of mourning was not used as a cover up,
but it was endorsed.
So people were allowed to have mental health issues if they were mourning the loss of a loved one.
Outside of that, yeah, absolutely, it was weakness, choice, scum.
The short of it.
Absolutely. So I thought I'd start with quite an easy one.
We'll see if we can name some common causes of mental health issues.
So obviously money is quite a big cause of mental health issues, isn't it?
It is. It is. I think it is.
Annoyingly though, and this is going to sound really bad,
but it's more of an issue in adults who do and don't have money.
I think when it comes to kids, like as long as the basic needs are met,
and as long as the social needs are met, people can be happy.
But yeah, money is a huge contributing factor.
I think the pressure of society of if do you own your own house?
If you don't and you lose your job and you're not necessarily signed on or anything like that,
or just the battle that people have to go through to get signed on and to get provision,
can have a huge toll on people's mental health.
But sorry, I'm going off on one. You're leading this one.
No, you're absolutely fine.
As I said, I wanted to go over a list of common reasons for mental health issues.
And as you said, society is a massive pressure and it does add to mental health issues.
The stipulations and the... I mean, I know I've said this in the past.
I'm autistic, yourself too.
There are certain social requirements that are unwritten.
And you know what? Growing up, I had to learn that the hard way.
And that was a massive issue with my mental health.
Because I didn't fit in society in the same way that everybody else did.
I was the kind of kid that wouldn't see why people needed to have to be quiet at a funeral.
Now I understand because somebody had the decency to explain that to me.
And you know what? It makes sense.
But at the time, because I was young and I was autistic,
I didn't have the capacity to look at the big picture and go,
you know what? This is mourning. People need to be reflecting.
And as such, talking through somebody's reflection is insulting.
You know, those kind of intricacies of society,
they put unknown pressure on, I think, a lot of young people and adults especially.
I know I suffer a lot because of things like that.
I think...
I mean, it's...
It's hard because I think people have stuff explained to them.
It's interesting that mental health is becoming more and more of a thing like it.
And to begin with, it was just something for rich people.
But you know what? I think you can clearly see the stamp of mental illness throughout history.
I mean, the number of rulers who go mad, not just with power,
but you know, like just their own mental stability falling apart over the years,
the number of people who...
Well, I guess the endorsed coping mechanism for absolutely centuries,
if not thousands of years, was alcohol.
But we won't... Maybe we'll touch upon this a little bit,
but mental illness leading to alcoholism,
but also alcoholism being used as a way of not just the individual coping,
but, oh, this person's just drunk.
Yeah. It's the way you're perceived, isn't it?
You look at somebody who's sat at the side of the road,
and the common knee-jerk response, mental response, is druggy or alcoholic, you know.
Instead of going, sick person needs help, you know?
Yeah.
Which is quite sad, really, isn't it?
It is sad, but at the same time it's also difficult to know how to help.
Yeah. And I think that's the fear, isn't it?
I think a lot of people don't respond out of fear of what reaction they're going to get.
You know, my mum always used to say,
oh, don't talk to the homeless people. They want to be where they are.
Whereas I was always like, but they're homeless. They've got nothing.
If I've got something, I want to give it to them.
Or if I've got more of something than they have, then I will share with them, you know.
But my mum was like, no, no, no, don't talk to them. They want to be where they are.
And I'm like, I'm not sure that's really true, mum.
Yeah, that's not always true anyway.
That is an oversimplification of an incredibly complex problem.
My mum is the queen of oversimplifications.
But to be fair, though, like, as you were having this conversation with her,
was she trying to get her shopping done?
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
There you go.
It was normally outside Sainbury's supermarket in Southend.
Yes. She didn't have her A-frame with her and she didn't have 45 minutes to put aside to give you a brief overview.
She had four kids. She had four kids.
Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a... That'll do it.
That will give you a couple of syllables answer there.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's another thing, isn't it, that is a common cause to mental health issues.
Like the pressure of parenthood. My mum was a single parent of four children.
And as a result, her mental health suffered massively.
And like as much as family, like her family, would help, they weren't obligated to help.
My mum certainly wouldn't push them to help.
They wouldn't help as much as I see some families helping.
And that meant the pressure was all on her. So her mental health was a big problem growing up for me.
You know. Anyway, the reason why I didn't necessarily list, I didn't have a list in my notes of common causes of mental health issues is because I feel like it's an open book.
It's an open book.
Is it? Is it? Well, no, I completely agree. It is an open book. Should we try and go through some of those now?
Would you would you like us to try? Yeah. Let's go over some of those.
Absolutely. Let's let's as I said, like money and society, like parenthood, even the pressures of parenthood.
Like, yeah. What else can you think of that quite commonly causes?
Right. Change, loss of employment.
If I'm honest, mourning. Sorry, I realize I'm also I'm really worried I'm mispronouncing that. Is there a different way of pronouncing the loss of one?
No, absolutely. Grieving.
It does literally sound like the time of, okay, grieving. That's the better way.
Grieving in reaction in reaction to illness, in reaction to malnutrition to a point.
Sleeplessness. I know. Sleeplessness can also lead to it.
Yeah. Excess, I think. I say excess as a generalization, like excessive alcohol use, excessive drug use.
Addiction. Yeah. Generally addiction addiction of any kind.
The annoying thing is, is like so many of these things are a bit of a reciprocal circle or repeating circle.
You know, like you get addicted to something because you're in because you feel like you're in a bad place.
Yeah. Yeah. And then you get and then you get in a truly bad place.
And then you cause heal momentarily with that addiction that you've got, which gives you a momentary release of serotonin.
It makes you feel a little bit better. But then you crash again afterwards. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Any more?
Yeah. So annoyingly, like so I said change, but also stifling repetition, boredom.
Yeah. Unfortunately, I think you were right to not make a list because it is ongoing, isn't it?
That's the point I was making. I mean, I literally wrote star insert as necessary star.
The reason I did that was because what I feel affects my mental health isn't going to be the same as what you feel affects your mental health.
And who am I to judge how your mental health is affected? And it's the same with everyone else.
I think one of the biggest things that people are too quick to do, especially keyboard warriors,
sat on Facebook looking through their lists. They're too quick to judge what other people are being affected by.
You know what? Your cat died. Fair enough. I wouldn't necessarily be as affected by it as you are, but it was my cat. Yeah.
I should be respectful enough of you and you as a human being, not even as somebody that I know, but you as a human being to say, I hope you're okay, mate.
Because that's all it takes. Yeah. You know, I don't, I might not comprehend why that is affecting you as much,
but I do understand that if you're affected, what you need to know is that people are there.
And not have somebody go, oh, you're just being a wuss. You're just being a wuss. What a pathetic thing to get upset about.
Well, you don't need that. For Christ's sake, people, please. Yeah.
Or to be fair, the way that could be inflected is it's a cat. Yeah.
Or something along those lines. But then again, I haven't done that properly because I'm not going to put the levels of contempt.
No, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you're saying. Yeah. It's just like, but it's like,
it's if there was something in your life that brought you joy on a daily basis and then it is taken away from you,
it should not be surprising for anyone if you then behave differently or are grieving for a period of time.
It's the annoying thing is it's just what makes up the important things of every human being's day is completely.
It's so different for every single individual, you know. Yeah. Yeah.
Like everybody's got their fix of some kind. And if stroking and feeding that cat was that person's fix, then yeah, it's going to mess them up.
Yeah. See, I'm a man of routine. Yeah. So I obviously I had two weeks off sick recently.
I had an operation and I had two weeks off sick. I went back yesterday and it's all changed.
It's all changed. My position in the office has changed.
Like I've got to now sit on the end of a bench as opposed to by the window, which is going to affect me.
Noise levels are going to be different because I'm in a more crowded area of the office.
My manager's changed. My teammates have all changed.
And like my anxiety, as soon as I realized all of those things I was going to have to deal with, like my desk has moved and none of my stuff been taken over.
So I've now got to go in and find all that stuff in the office and take it to my desk.
And like the anxiety that I felt immediately spiked and I was like I start by found myself by about three o'clock in the afternoon looking for other jobs.
I was like, hold on Nick, this is just because change. You need to just give it a minute. You'll be fine.
But I had that moment where I was like, no, I'm done.
But I know that's the autistic in me and I struggle with change as it is anyway and I overreact to it.
But I also understand that that's a trait of mine and therefore I need to give myself a moment.
So I was just allowing myself or I have a look at things, you know, have a look at other jobs.
You'll realize that it's not like you're going to go through more stress trying to find something to replace this minor inconvenience.
Then you are like to get over this issue.
But, you know, just it's horrible having to go through those remedial things.
And like I said, like some people you might get up in the morning and for three days in the morning exactly the same thing might happen.
It might be as simple as you stub your toe on the edge of the bed every morning for three mornings.
But that's going to affect by the third morning you're going to be like, oh, for Christ's sake, is nothing going to happen.
And because that one thing happens in the morning, everything throughout the day is going to feel that little bit more bitter.
You know, and that is, people don't understand how the little things all stack up.
But it is. It's exactly that. It could be as simple as you stub your toe, you know.
But it puts a bit of pill in your mouth and all of a sudden everything else you view the world differently and everything else is just that little bit more bitter and feels that little bit worse.
You know, you can't get the right newspaper at the shop.
So that's obviously a personal attack against you.
You get stuck in traffic on the way to work.
Like, obviously that's personal and it's because it's you, you know.
I think weirdly enough, this thing where you're talking about it being personal has just made me think something.
There's a big cause of mental illness that we didn't cover.
Go on. Bullying. Bullying.
Bullying, yeah. Yeah. I know. I suffered a lot of bullying when I was growing up, when we spoke about this during the education podcast.
And my mental health was ridiculous growing up. I had to have counselling on numerous occasions.
Obviously I was in foster care as well, so that didn't help matters.
But yeah, bullying was a massive cause of my mental health issues growing up.
Well, sorry, mate. But it's just, yeah, you're right.
But it's just, it's interesting that we all learn to cope with little things.
So like we learn to tolerate the little things getting changed.
But it's not necessarily because we've learned to accept.
Like in that difference between acceptance and tolerance is like is massive.
Tolerance is you put a brave face on it, even though something pisses you off or something, you know, horribly affects you.
Tolerance is like going, it's not OK, but I'm going to just, you know, I'm going to be respectful.
I'm going to still abide by the expectations and laws of society.
Like it's just it just makes me think, though, that Mike is the process of growing up just put in a brave face on things.
And it is because I know we all get more resilient to a point.
But it's just kind of made me think about how when you're a kid, like I will admit things have gotten a lot better for myself,
like walking down the street as a teenager, you get shitty comments from other teenagers and from other people.
I don't know if society has just gotten kinder or if that's just an age thing or if it's the fact that I'm six foot four and way God knows how many stone now.
But I don't know. Sorry. I don't know where I'm going with that, mate.
It's just. No, you're right. It does.
It does feel like it can feel like things are a personal attack, like you'll always feel like the lights are turning red when you're late for something,
simply because the fact that they're turning red when you need to get somewhere causes that bit more stress and that bit more mental triggers.
And you may well face the same amount of red lights on a normal day, but because you're not faced with that time constraint, you don't notice them.
You can just sit back and enjoy the ride, you know.
But you know, you're absolutely right. Anyway, the main thing I wanted to make the main point I wanted to make in that is, yes, there are a broad spectrum of all the reasons why people are affected and the mental health is affected.
And they're going to be different for everybody. Just allow them to be different for everybody, you know.
It's not as bad as it used to be. I will say this. Mental health issues are new, as we know. As long as there's been a brain, there's been mental health issues.
However, our perception of them has changed massively over the last hundred years, let alone over the last 2000 years.
Let's go back. Let's go back. Let's go back to the first recorded instance of treatment of mental health.
Do you know what the first known treatment of mental health was?
I've got look at. Oh, I've got loads of guesses. How many how many guesses? You can have as many as you want. I would be amazed if you got it.
Fantastic. OK, so the first one I imagine was they took a spear and then they shoved it through your heart and then and then and then and then you stop complaining and saying things that they disagree with.
Generally like that's the other option is they grab your head and then they chop it off specifically to stop you saying things that I want to just say to the viewers, to the listeners, as dark as it sounds like James is going here.
He's bang on the money. He is right in there with why like his reasoning behind his suggestions is bang on the money. And I'll get to that in a minute. I'll let you carry on.
OK, well, OK, so I can. All right, so I can talk. In in ancient days, if somebody was mentally unwell, for example, if you were a powerful ruler, they'd say, oh, you're eccentric.
If you were poor, you were demon possessed. You know, and now this is annoying because I don't want to weird out listeners too much, but I think there is more to this world than what we see in front of us.
And I do think that there there are elements where, you know, there's a lot of things that can be explained, but I still believe there are things which can't be explained. And I sometimes think that there are elements where.
You know what? No, I'll just say it truthfully. I believe in demons to a point. I don't you know, not necessarily fucking goat creatures with fucking horns, all of that stuff. But I do think there are, you know, spirits and there is stuff going on beyond the world.
But it got to the you know it people didn't understand we're talking about times when people didn't understand germs. Yeah, we didn't understand light. Yeah, no, like they'd they'd light a fire, but they wouldn't understand why.
You know cozying up to a fire stopped them getting ill. You know, this is a society which didn't understand damp.
It's really interesting that the few, a few helpful customs in a number of religions and societies was if if you are sick, you are placed outside of the community, so that it doesn't spread to everyone else.
It's one of the few times when incredibly superstitious people and incredibly smart people would actually get on the same boat. Yeah.
But it's so first so first treatment would be death, the next treatment is imprisonment, and now, this is really.
This is really weird, because this actually kept on going. This, this was still ongoing in the late 18th century so in the 1800s or 18th century this was still going on.
And I know this because I wrote a, I wrote a paper on. Well, you know, I maybe I didn't write a paper but I read a lot about Joseph mullard William Turner, the person who's the Turner prize that's named after is if you if people still use notes if you take
a 20 quid out your wallet if you're lucky enough to have 20 quid, and you turn it over that bloke that bloke his mum was mentally ill.
And a prison in those days at least was just a prison for the mentally ill so you take all of the undesirable behaviors, so I have got a story time with Nick, a bit later, which we're going to talk about Bethlehem.
Mainly, mainly because it's possibly the most famous of all assignments, especially in this country but potentially even if people don't know it.
Just through the words. But yeah, you're right, you're right. So, all right, so then the other ones include electro therapy, beating someone's act some is stoning hysteria I know was treated with sex toys in Victorian women.
Okay, yes, so sorry those those those are the quick ones. So, obviously, the reasoning behind mental health issues that they were given 1000 years ago was stuff like, like James said it was like demonic possession, they didn't know that mental health was linked with the brain
they just took it as a demon was in your soul trying to get out. Or you were cursed. That's quite common one. And I've got a bit of a theory behind curses and, and witches because witches.
I don't personally believe in witches. However, I do think there is a strong link between the masculine society and witches and mental health. I think there's a strong link between the three which is why I'll get to that in a second anyway, curses sorcery and a vengeful God were a lot of reasons why you might get mental health problems.
But one of the earliest form of treatment, other than murder and imprisonment actual treatment somebody's got a problem we want to make it better was trepanning do you know what trepanning is.
Same as bloodletting in no no bloodletting is where they cut, and they allow, obviously, it's self explanatory they let blood in order to try and make you feel relief.
Apologies I just, I just remembered that the, the scientific atheistic Romans actually got it somewhat right in that they believed in humours and that mental illness was caused by a wrong type of.
Yeah, the four humans.
Exactly, exactly. But sorry we'll go in. Sorry I'm not going to take us off topic on that one. Okay, so what is trapeze and trepanning.
Trapeze, trepanning is the use it using rudimentary stone tools to bore a hole into the side of your skull to relieve the pressure on your brain, which I mean when it was successful it was successful.
I'll give them that. Like when you had like genuine mental health problems that were caused by brain trauma. Like yeah fantastic. You fell over and you banged your head it caused the brain to swell you end up with mental health problems because of that fine, trepanning bang, there's the swelling gone off your brain.
Is that the earliest form of lobotomy. No, well yes, yes but they wouldn't insert anything into the brain. They would just remove the skull around the brain, and they were, it was, it was proved it was looked at in some of the graves that they found in India.
The holes, it was never, they rarely killed the people they were trepanning. Sometimes people would live on for days, weeks, months, even years because the hole itself in the skull would end up with healing marks around it and rounding where the skull had healed.
Despite the hole, it wouldn't seal again, but it would heal. But yeah trepanning is one of the reasons I mentioned that as well is there was a book, I don't know if you've read his dark materials.
Is that the title of the book, his dark material? No it's the trilogy, it's the trilogy. It's the Northern Lights, Amber Spyglass, Subtle Knife.
Yes, yeah the ones where people have familiars that are like called demons. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah so there's a man, Will Parry? No John Parry, his dad, John Parry had trepanning performed on him and it was quite a common trait of a certain part of that world. And I just read about it then and then obviously when I came upon it, came upon it when I was researching I was like oh god I know what that is, that's disgusting.
Yeah incredibly dangerous. Do you know when the first mental health hospital was founded and where it was founded?
Now this is frustrating because annoyingly I know that there have been a number of quite advanced civilizations throughout history. I'm not talking anti-grav tech or any bullshit like that. I mean, I don't know maybe but like you get certain places at certain times where things have become incredibly advanced.
Yeah. You know, like Rome was an example of that and that's why it's... Yeah especially with their irrigation.
There's also talk of an ancient, of the first instance of the steam engine going back as far as Philippia. Yeah, I mean they've got pictures and they've got examples of the Baghdad battery, haven't they? Which is the earliest form of an electronic device.
It was just a jar with a copper filament and an iron rod and they used to use lemon juice to create an electrical current.
So what I'm struggling with here is if we're talking... I'll tell you what Nick, do you mind narrowing this down? Was the first mental health hospital a mental health hospital as we know them today in the western world?
Okay. All right. In which case then I'd say that possibly the first mental health hospitals might be an ancient temple like the temple of Apollo where the inscription on the side of it was know thyself.
Like I think people would go there for prophecies readings for all kinds of healing availments. Am I closer to the marker or am I way off?
I mean you're... it depends. What date range are you talking?
Okay, so this date range would be... I want to put it about maybe a thousand BC.
I mean the first recorded actual mental health hospital in history that we know of was in 792 C.
Okay. All right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Whereabouts was it? What did it look like?
It was in... it was in Baghdad.
Okay.
I'm trying to find out more about it now. It was... or more of an insane asylum. So it was an area that was... it was an area that was segregated from the city where people could... it was quite picturesque.
There was open areas. People could walk around and not... weren't confined to rooms necessarily but you were confined to that part of the town.
Were these people fed or were they like...
Yeah. Yeah. They were treated as in they were cared for.
Yeah. Back in 792 C.E. I can't remember if that's Anno Domino or BC.
Mainly because I'm not intelligent enough.
So I want to go back to the potential link between witches and... and this is only hypothesis. However during my research I quite often end up in philosophical thought... trains of thought when I'm researching the topics that I'm looking into.
And it made... it made a lot of sense, right?
Now go with me here. Male society has always been very strong and it would be a lot easier to blame a female for a male weakness than for the male to take the blame themselves.
And quite often witches were actually young beautiful women and they were told... they were said to have put spells on quite commonly men.
And those men would eventually have... quite often were married and would end up having to out their feelings to their... their actual spouse.
Of which the spouse would go spare and demand that they did something about it. Of which the man would go but it's not my fault she put a spell on me.
It's unfortunate that even this language is used today. Yeah. Yeah. That woman is enchanting. Yeah.
Annoyingly I wouldn't use that cringeworthy language but yeah you know like unfortunately that sort of thought has crossed my mind.
I mean I will be the first to put my hands up and say I have done some stupid things in my time because I thought I was impressing a girl.
The reality of it is that I wasn't and the girl wasn't interested at all. But something in my brain made me go do that it will be really impressive.
And shock horror it wasn't you know.
But the main reason I wanted to say that is because society itself has always been quite heavily male led and males don't like to admit they're weak and yet...
And would much rather blame their shortcomings on somebody that doesn't have the ability to fight back as hard.
And in that day and age it was young women who didn't have the strength to fight back and they would end up scapegoated because of the infidelious sometimes even infidelious thoughts of that man.
Because the women themselves wouldn't have any bloody idea what was going on but the man would blame them.
It's kind of sad that what you're literally talking about here is summed up in the lyrics of a Disney song from the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
The one to do with I think it's is it called Hellfire or something?
I can't remember the last time I watched Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Yeah it's just I haven't watched it necessarily although I am a Disney fan I haven't watched this one recently but it was...
I'm sure they'll make a live action of it soon.
Maybe, maybe.
But it's about...
Really enough the plot of the lyrics of this song is exactly what you're talking about.
It's a man who is finding his heartstrings being tugged and pulled and changed in ways that he'd forgotten he could be changed or affected.
Sorry affected is the right word.
And he realizes that what he's feeling goes against his beliefs so therefore it must be her fault.
Yeah, yeah.
And that was the reality of it back then wasn't it?
I say that was obviously with complete confidence that what I'm saying is true.
It's a hypothetical conversation guys please.
It makes a lot of sense in my head anyway even if it's not something that you personally...
What's your idea? What do you think? Is there any link between witches and mental health and men's ego shall we say?
Well I think it's well known that the patriarchy has been somewhat toxic and it has come down to the basic biology that when we were fitter women would be able to have children.
I can't create life.
And men would tend, not always, but tend to be stronger or to grow slightly bigger or you know along those lines.
And I think unfortunately from that I know that what you've said there is true is that you do get this blame and I think it's also interesting that there are elements of this in society today when it comes to, I don't know, women being viewed as being unreasonable for being emotional.
Or like you know like hysterical or whatever.
And I think you shouldn't...
Yeah, where am I going with this?
That should not be the case.
I think it's kind of frustrating as well because I'm not sure...
Because I'm certain some societies would have and a lot of people, some people would have been even back then, but I don't know how aware people were of subjective and objective reality.
Yeah, sorry in short, yes I can understand that. I don't think all mental health is to do necessarily...
No, well then I'm sorry I'm expanding on your words here in a way that I know you didn't intend.
I don't think all mental health is necessarily linked with witches.
I think that a lot of people accused of being heretics, witches and stuff were just people who saw things in a different light.
And I think sometimes those people, either as a result of just the way that they view things or as a result to the way that other people reacted.
Like I can't think of a more of a terrible effect that you can have on someone's mental health than being ostracized from your entire community.
Yeah, I mean just for the sake of the listeners, James was just making the point that it wasn't necessarily witches that he was linking to, it was supernatural.
Obviously we know that historically mental health issues were supernatural, they were seen as supernatural.
Which is why James was saying, I don't think previous, it wasn't just about witchcraft, it was about supernatural in general, wasn't it?
So absolutely, I think perceptions were, as I said back then, it was supernatural in some way.
It was either a god, or it was witchcraft, or it was sorcery, but reality now, like the sensible educated human now understands that mental health is down to lifestyle normally.
Or the pressures of society, or it's your brain's and body's way of saying something's wrong without actually going, like your limbs falling off.
You were right, I'm just going through my notes here so I'm trying to catch back up with where we were.
You were right, absolutely throughout the middle ages, the most common forms of treatment for mental health issues,
and when we say mental health issues I mean being possessed, and obviously having a demon living inside your soul, that quite commonly were beaten to death, or the demon was tried to be beaten out of them.
They were tortured, tied down, because they were sick people that had evil things inside them and they had to be drawn out with thumb screws and stuff.
And sometimes they'd even be just imprisoned. Imprisonment was the most common, I think is the most commonly used method of treatment throughout history for mental health issues.
Don't understand it, lock them away. Don't want to see them, put them in a cage.
To the point where even now, in certain countries in the world, normally those with an intense sense of familial pride,
they will still lock their mentally unwell relatives in their basement, or put them in a home.
Quite often, if you go somewhere, I'm using a generalisation here, but if you look at China for example, historically, they wouldn't necessarily put someone in a home.
Their family would look after that person if they were unwell.
But if they were mentally unwell, they would be locked in the basement of their house.
Nobody would know that person exists.
And it was the same in the western world. All throughout Europe, up through the middle ages, even into the early 16th, late 17th even,
you wouldn't necessarily put your loved one in, or your relative I should say, in a mental hospital.
You would look after them yourself. And by look after them yourself I mean lock them in the basement.
Quite often, rich families would renege their responsibility onto their servants, and have their servants look after the mentally unwell person.
They would abandon them on the streets and let them become beggars.
Completely do away with them, because the shame of having a mentally unwell member of the family was too much.
They would hide them or get rid of them. Thank God that's changed, otherwise I would have been screwed at a young age.
I think it's frustrating as well because there are so many different levels of mental unwellness.
So what you're describing there is when someone is mentally unwell to the point where they can no longer communicate,
or, and I hate to say it this way, but unfortunately, possibly I am just being a bit dark here,
it just sounds like, or the level of mental health that you're talking about there is where someone can no longer be controlled,
or can no longer behave, or can no longer meet the expectations of society.
Society expects you to commune with most people who address you directly, to only become angry when seriously aggravated,
or when you're incredibly angry and normally it's the result of someone else's provocation.
So somebody who's mentally unwell to the point where they would attack someone would know, you know what, it's frustrating that this is the thing,
but there are so many, I don't know, it's interesting that throughout history madness is used as this derogatory label to,
it's used as an excuse to take away your rights as a human being under the guise of you, the conscious part of your mind,
the thing that makes you a thinking human is even no longer there or does not function.
Yes, so if I was talking about that professionally, obviously having the care experience that I've got, we call that mental capacity.
Do you have the mental capacity to make decisions for your own, make decisions of fair judgement on your own care, your own life, your own finances,
all of those things, those are the things that you would quite commonly be assessed if you're old and you're in a care home,
or if you're being cared for at all, or if you, I mean the last places I worked in were mental health homes,
predominantly for those with autism or other conditions that affect the neurological development of individuals.
And I mean, I've got to say there was a lady, I won't name names obviously, it wouldn't be professional of me,
but it was a lady who had been in mental health homes her entire life, she was 74 years old this lady,
she came from, she lived in one of the oldest asylums in the area, one of the last asylums to shut in the UK,
and when she was young, as soon as she was put into this mental health hospital, the first thing they did was they removed her teeth.
They removed her teeth not because she was a threat of biting, but to remove the risk that it could ever happen.
That was quite common practice, to remove people's teeth, to stop the risk of you being bitten,
so whether she would ever have bitten anyone, let's just take it away, you know?
And the saddest thing about this lady was that she was the most adorable person, kind, gentle, and nobody visited her,
she had no family that came to see her in all the time that I was in that home.
The same can be said for a lot of the people that I cared for, they were put into a home where their loved ones had the conscience cleared,
and we put them somewhere, they're being looked after, that's all that matters, and then they just got on with their life,
and left them there, you know? And it was upsetting for me, being, what, 2019, 2018, 2017, and yet people were just dumped,
don't want to look after you, you're too much asshole, off you go.
They're still your loved ones, you know what I mean? Is it their fault that they're in that state?
No. So why treat them like it's their fault? Is it your fault that they're in that state? No.
So why not just look at them with love? You know?
Anyway, I don't want to go on a dark turn, but the treatments of some mental health, even now, is still in the wrong direction, I think.
But treatment has got a lot better, I mean, we don't use electroconvulsive therapy anymore, that's a positive.
I mean, did that ever work? No! You have to ask, because there's got to be, with everything...
But it's like lobotomies, did lobotomies ever work? If anybody doesn't know what a frontal lobotomy is...
It did make the people less violent, and it didn't always kill them. No.
So you're right, did it work in that? Did it remove their... it worked in that it removed their violent tendencies.
It did not make, it did not cure them by any stretch of the embankment.
So the theory behind a lobotomy is that in the frontal lobe of the brain, it controls your mood and a lot of your behaviours, your choices that you make surrounding those behaviours.
So what doctors thought would be a great idea is to place and implement, which I can only describe as an ice pick, into the soft tissue above the eye.
Hammer it until it disconnects the nerves that connect the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain, therefore shutting off your ability to have moods.
When it didn't kill you, it rendered the person extremely complicit for a very long time, until they died.
Normally because they did something completely stupid, because they didn't have that regulative part of their brain to tell them that was a stupid idea.
I'm having terrifying times. Okay. So let me go into a little bit about Bethlehem Hospital.
So Bethlehem Hospital is, if you don't know it by name, that's not necessarily strange. It was founded, it was established in 1247 in the UK.
It was established in 1247 and still exists today. That is the most incredible thing about this hospital. It still exists as Bethlehem Hospital today.
Bethlehem Hospital is where we get the term Bedlam from. Craziness, insanity, Bedlam. Yeah, that's where it comes from. It's a bastardisation of the word Bethlehem.
It was a workhouse, if you don't know what a workhouse is. Workhouses were places where poor people could go work and then have lodgings and food provided to them free of charge.
As long as they worked, they were able to live in these houses. Now, workhouses were almost the first asylums.
People with unwell people quite often took them to workhouses and made them work in order to get them out of their house.
I don't know if you've seen Of Mice and Men, but I always think of Lenny going to that farm.
Think about that as a workhouse. They provided food and board and they work. Admittedly, Lenny's friend doesn't have mental health issues.
Or maybe he does. I don't know if mental health issues is the right word. Neurological development issues, I suppose, is the right wording there.
Lenny certainly does. And we all know what happened to Lenny if you've watched the film or read the books.
Anyway, so it was originally started by the Church of Bethlehem. It was a religious organisation.
All who lived there would have had a star sewn into their clothing to show its affiliation with the order.
It was eventually claimed by the Crown in 1350. The name Bethlehem Hospital was bastardised into Bethlehem Hospital and that's as it remained until today.
In 1403 the hospital would greet its first six mental health patients.
So obviously in 1247 it was a workhouse. In 1403 it would become more of a mental health hospice.
It's interesting that workhouses, I always used to think of workhouses as being very much a Victorian thing.
They still existed in the Victorian days but they were less common I suppose in 1247.
But I suppose more than anything they would have been a religious institute like I said. It was started by the Church of Bethlehem.
So it wouldn't have been set up privately like they quite commonly were back in Victorian days.
Workhouses were quite often houses that were owned by a lord and lady.
They would typically be owned by a lord and lady who would make money off the fact that people were working essentially for free.
Yeah it's annoying as well because these things were in some instances, not in all, in some instances were seen as a charitable venture.
The fact that because you had people who if you didn't have a skill, if you weren't a member of a guild, if you didn't have existing property or a way to provide for yourself, it provided somewhere for you to go.
The problem is though, that yes it provided somewhere for you to go, but these places, they are very rarely described in any positive light.
No that's it.
At all. Unfortunately you went there because you had no other choice in order to get the bare basics of life and the work was not pleasant. It was unskilled but it was not pleasant.
It was hard work, back breaking work. And as soon as you weren't able to work, you weren't able to stay there either. You were out.
So it was a one trick thing. If you got injured because of the work, there was an insurance to pay you off for being injured at work.
If you were injured at work, it was quite commonly your fault. So you were stopped working.
Another example of the poor standards is that in 1403 when these six mentally held patients joined Bethlehem Hospital, how do you suppose they were treated?
They were locked in manacles alone and the demons that possessed them were beaten out of them. A theme which would last for the next 400 years.
The imprisonment and beating of patients anyway. It was a theme that evolved.
Again, all that does is it forces the animalistic part of the human being.
The red blooded, instinctual part of the human being to enter that fight or flight state.
Or into that coward state to be afraid to enter that almost neonatal childish infantile state of fear.
Did things ever get better at this hospital?
As I said, it still exists today. I would like to think that that meant that it got better.
But history wasn't so kind. In 1619, Helkire Crook was appointed by the King.
It was the first time a mental health specialist was appointed to run the mental health hospital.
That's 1619. It had been open for over 400 years by that point.
It was the first time a mental health, as I said loosely, specialist ran the hospital.
He had released a book which later came out that it was completely plagiarised from a number of different papers that were written by different people about the brain and body.
He was eventually investigated when they found out that he had plagiarised his book.
They investigated him at the hospital and found that he had been extorting the patients that he was caring for by not feeding them in order to pocket the money they were paying for their room and board.
Fucking ridiculous.
He was unseated and replaced by a member of the King's choosing again.
The site itself, Bethlehem Hospital has been open for 800 years, nearly 800 years.
However, it's not been in the same site.
The first time it moved was because the original site was built over a sewer and that sewer started overflowing into the courtyard.
The King decided that it was unsanitary to have these people cared for in a cesspit essentially.
They decided they would move the site.
They relocated to Moorfields in London and this is where it actually got the name Bedlam.
The Munro family took over for the next century and a quarter.
It was thought this was the darkest time with treatments becoming more torturous in a hospital which now could house over 150 patients.
Now I'm aware that there were worse places that existed throughout the years of the asylum.
However, the reason I picked this one out was because it existed as I said for nearly 800 years.
During that time can you imagine the amount of people that were, in inverted commas, treated for mental health illnesses.
Especially given the fact that by the late 17th century they were caring for upwards of 150 people at a time.
Using methods such as electroconvulsive therapy, insulin shock therapy and lobotomies all performed at this hospital.
What is insulin shock therapy? Isn't that insulin for diabetes?
Yeah, insulin is produced by the pancreas.
Let me get up the authentic description.
Insulin shock therapy or insulin coma therapy was a form of psychiatric treatment in which patients were repeatedly injected with large doses of insulin in order to produce daily comas over several weeks.
Wow.
Do you know when it was introduced?
When was it introduced and I'm hoping it's been banned?
It was introduced in 1927.
No, get out.
And it was used extensively in the 40s and 50s mainly for schizophrenia before falling out of favour and being replaced by neuroleptic drugs in the 1960s.
Well again, that's completely understandable. Just like, cool, we don't know what to do with you. You can spend your life asleep.
Yeah, I mean, were people with frontal lobotomies any better? They were basically asleep. They were essentially turned into zombies.
I suppose people that had insulin shock therapy had the ability to wake up from their coma and go on with their life.
But there's no going back from a frontal lobotomy, I'll tell you that.
So yeah, two more relocations between the 16th century and the 20th century.
And in 1950 it was eventually incorporated into the NHS where it remains today.
And although treatments were not as brutal as some asylums, as I said, I think the longevity of this hospital makes it possibly one of the worst asylums to have ever been.
The worst asylums to have ever existed, you think, are the amount of people that it would have treated in the most barbaric forms.
OK, maybe not at the intensity, at some of the asylums from around the world, but the numbers, the numbers, Mason.
We'll have a little bit of a debrief following that, shall we? So I'm going to ask you, who do you think has the highest level of depression?
Which country has the highest level of depression? Percentage. Let's go percentage per population first.
Sweden.
Sweden has the highest percentage of depression.
Yeah, I'd say. Yeah, I reckon it's going to be one of the wealthy.
I'm going to say, think global events that may cause depression.
What are we talking, USA?
No, Ukraine. Ukraine is currently, understandably, the highest in percentage.
Yeah, that's a. Second place is the US.
It's absolutely. Ukraine has 6.7% of its total population suffering or reported to have suffered from suffering from depression.
Understandably, given the war in Ukraine. However, Ukraine's Ukraine's population is 10% that of the US at 35 million.
The US has 335 million individuals living within its borders, at least, and its population, its percentage of depressed population is at 6.5% or 17.5 million people.
I should point out that is the third highest level, like the number of depressed people within the world.
OK, beaten only by China and India, whose population is over a billion each. And their percentage of population is 4.2 and 4.5 respectively.
The US is ridiculously depressed in comparison.
That's really something to consider.
It's also sad in that America was founded on a number of things, but isn't the pursuit of happiness one of them? Yeah, love, being the pursuit of happiness.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The I think the thing that lets them down is their choice of treatment for mental health problems.
Now, there is, they do heavily use verbal therapies, which I think is possibly one of the most positive forms of treatment for mental health, stuff like counseling.
However, they follow that up with the administration of serotonin inhibitors, other neurological drugs.
If you actually read the side effects of these medications, quite often the side effects are to induce suicidal thoughts or to induce anxiety and nervousness, which are going to lead to mental health problems.
You know, and the other thing to be mindful of in the US is that pharmaceutical companies are some of the biggest money spinners.
And why would they want to cure your depression when they can make a lot of money off it?
People say about the NHS, we need to privatize our health care. The minute you privatize health care, you make being sick a business.
When you make being sick a business, you do away with any kind of need for cures.
It all becomes treatment because treatment is a monthly subscription. A cure is a one time deal.
I think that's the problem with US. I think their privatized health care has led to conditions not being cured.
Companies not seeking to get people better because if they made the entire country better, they wouldn't have a business anymore.
I won't go down this route properly, but I'm just going to throw out there that medical debt is either the third or second largest cause of personal bankruptcy in the US.
Well, do you know how much it costs to have a baby in the US?
And I'm assuming this isn't a backyard tub.
No, no, no. This is go on the ward, have doctors deliver your baby. How much are you going to pay?
Oh, this is really difficult because there is a huge amount in there.
But at the same time, this is a basic human right. 50, 70 years down the line, I don't know what stuff will happen, but this is fundamental to our continuation as a species.
So you'd think there would be.
Having a first baby voucher. So you get your first one free.
Something like that. Yeah, you know, like there should maybe be a coupon in your tax book.
Go on. All right. You know what? You know what? I'm going to be obscene.
I'm going to be no. OK, right.
Bare minimum.
Three and a half thousand pounds or I'll say five thousand dollars.
No. The bare minimum. No, no, we're close.
OK, so we are talking about the obscene sorts of figure.
All right, fine. Fifteen, fifteen thousand dollars.
That's where it starts.
Double it for the most common price you will pay to have a baby in the US.
Do you know how much it costs to call an ambulance to your door?
In the US. And this isn't something I've researched. This is just something I know is ridiculous.
So people say that every single time a ambulance leaves the pad, as it were, as in leaves its designated station at a hospital, it costs the NHS eight hundred pounds.
Now, considering that's in dollars, that's going to be, I don't know, somewhere around.
Fourteen hundred, twelve hundred. Yeah, it's going to be around twelve hundred.
OK, so we're looking. So assuming that it's the same and we're looking at the same sort of stuff here, then that's twelve hundred.
I'm going to assume that the minimum markup would put it at two thousand dollars.
Six.
Seriously. Six thousand dollars to have an ambulance come to your door.
Basically, if you get ill in the US. Tough.
Anyway, yeah, absolutely. You can see why health is a common form of bankruptcy in the US.
You can also see why mental health problems exist so predominantly in the US.
There's so much pressure on people to stay well.
And to stay OK and to continue earning. My God.
The reason I kind of go over that is because the US have always prided themselves on treating mental health the right way.
As a matter of fact, when I was working in the care home that he used to work in,
the format of treatment that we used to use to support the individuals was originally developed in America.
However, when it came to us, to the UK, we added the UK's touch on it.
It was called Pro Act Skip, which is the positive range of actions to avoid crisis and use therapies, strategies for crisis intervention and prevention.
Namely, it's how do you get someone that can't communicate to you what they need and find out what they need?
And on the absolute last resort, how do you help someone that is in crisis,
that is having a meltdown and may be causing injury to themselves or to local people or to the staff?
How do you control that situation? And that's why I used to train.
Now, the reason I bring that up is the US have always been very, very heavy on control and restraint.
However, they developed this strategy of restraining people in the least harmful possible way.
It comes over to the UK and we add the there is no alternative before using that strategy.
We exhaust every other effort before that, where we put them in an environment where they're happy,
where they have everything they could possibly need and we make their quality of life better.
And we get them doing the things they want to be doing in a positive way,
meaning you tend to find that negative behaviors like acting out and violence, they've all got a purpose.
People are doing that because getting you to understand what it is they actually need is a lot more difficult than just punching you and taking it.
Yeah. Yeah.
All behavior has a purpose and all that we had to do when like through the training that I used to provide is work out what's the purpose of that behavior?
What are they trying to say? You know?
Anyway, the reason I say that is because what I found through my experience is that the best form of treatment for mental health problems is actually love.
And I don't want to sound corny when I say that.
It starts with you. When I've had mental health issues, the biggest thing that I've done that has helped me is give myself a break.
Do you understand how much pressure you put on yourself first thing in the morning to get up, get dressed and get to work
and then to maintain a standard that keeps you employed all the way throughout the day?
And then you come home and you have to maintain your home life with your kids or you have to maintain your home structure with meals, etc, etc.
And then you go to bed and then you go and do it all again the next day.
And that wheel keeps turning day after day after day after day.
The pressure you put on yourself when predominantly the most fundamental thing that you need to do is wake up in the morning, survive the day and go to sleep.
When I have been unwell mentally, that's the pressure that I put on myself.
I go, let's start from simple, let's cut it back to basics, let's get up in the morning, let's get through the day, let's go to sleep.
No more pressure. Can't do anything else, won't do anything else.
Give yourself the time. Let's get through it slowly. One more thing. Let's add the things that are necessary into your life.
I need a job in order to pay the rent. Right, let's try and go back to work.
But no more pressure. Let's not put pressure on ourselves to maintain these ridiculous standards.
Let's just do the work. Yeah?
And then eventually you begin to acclimatise, I began to acclimatise myself better.
And it wasn't because I have this wonderful wand of fixing it, I didn't take massive amounts of pharmaceutical drugs to get better.
I just took care of myself. I gave myself a break and people around me told me it was okay to do so.
Essentially I love myself and the people around me love me too.
That's the best cure. That's the best treatment for mental health issues.
That's incredibly powerful.
Just remember that saying which I see everywhere, that it's okay to not be okay.
I think that's a really powerful note and a good thing to end it on there. That's a powerful message there Nick.
I think there's a lot more to cover. As there has been with every single topic we've covered.
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really good first stab into mental health.
Well, thank you all for listening. Thank you for taking the time to get through the podcast with us once again.
I hope you all have a wonderful time and we look forward to joining you again on the next one.
Goodbye from me.