By Art De Rivers
Tabi Cockerton is someone I have met online recently. I have also contacted Phil Lockwood in the UK who does some mental health advocacy who helps her.
It could be said that Tabi's magical thinking has kept her alive. In the absence of help for her Dissociative Identity Disorder and her abandoment by the NHS services in the UK, she made a fairy a day .
A fairy a day to keep abandonment away ... So goes her personal tragic rhyme
And yet she has succeeded in highlighting important difficulties in the UK for the therapeutic treatment of people within the spectrum of difficulties known as "Personality Disorders" Her magical thinking made the fairies go out online and seek others .
"I thought what can I do to stop my mind from giving way?"
And others came to her from the forgotten shadows
That's when she decided to make fairies, one for each day she hadn't received the help she felt she needed and deserved.
She now has hundreds, but some light has come from the dark that has engulfed her life.
She said: "I thought there must be so many people hurting out there hidden behind closed doors that nobody knows about.
"So I sent fairies to people who were hidden away - as a way of connecting us all. It was a certain way of surviving."
The story of Tabi - also known as Jane was first written up by Peter Truman on the 19th March 2008 . Its a good piece of hearted journalism . Stories though move on, and Tabi is still without help .
Dissociation cannot be helped towards self-integration by other than slow re-association of what is keeping the deep reflexive defense of dissociation in place ..
It is a brave person who wants to go down that route to heal .
Healing is very painful as the split up self encounters its own reasons for shattering . Traumas of child abuse and injury are often at base the arena for why the Self internally speaking guillotines its own limbs and separates them off whilst keeping them distantly animated ..
Empathic reflection for healing by a good therapist takes years - for they are the mirror of the broken Self which struggles both to be itself and not be itself and they offer slow validated reconstruction . Relational witnessing solidifies the Self and becomes internalised .
To re-inhabit the almost un-inhabitable takes care and an empathy that was never given . Good therapists do not alter tragic history but give it witness and its ocean of restorative grief back . And the pain is then processed into a self that integrates slowly .
How can a child heal unless they are reflected and heard in how they feel ? How can anyone ?
Tabi's struggle is the struggle of many in the UK . Her local NHS Trust once helped her, then ended her service without giving her reason she claims . What becomes apparent in the UK as we go deeper into examination of PD spectrum disorders is the genuine lack of long term empathic therapies for the emotionally damaged .
The NHS UK has gone Cognitive Behaviour Therapy one-dimensioned. Its a small dimension of a narrow application range now being questionably elasticated to fit all sorts of people and ranges of problems . Its critics are many and are growing .
Meanwhile Tabi and the fairies create a life in the whirl of the UK's poor therapy supply logics .
Her Trust was linked to the world famous Henderson that dealt with post trauma and its future seems uncertain .
The Henderson Hospital in Sutton was closed temporarily in April 2008 for many reasons, including a reduction in funded referrals which meant that the residential service was no longer clinically viable. All staff have been temporarily redeployed in other posts within the Trust and have been kept fully informed about the consultation process.
The Henderson Hospital in Sutton was closed temporarily in April 2008 for many reasons, including a reduction in funded referrals which meant that the residential service was no longer clinically viable. All staff have been temporarily redeployed in other posts within the Trust and have been kept fully informed about the consultation process.
Tabi though had to use NHS Trust money to go to York where a special retreat helped her . The money it appears ran out .
62 Primary Care Trusts (Commissioning bodies who create service redesign for large populations that then pay Trusts to supply those services ) are now engaged in a process of consultation for the shape of new PD services . The consultation is all across London , the South East of England , the East and more besides .
Public consultation:
A public consultation is going to be held, which is looking into the provision of Tier 4 residential services. This is being led by West Kent PCT on behalf of the 62 PCTs within the East of England, London, South Central and the South East Coast. It is due to start in April 2009 and the report on the outcome is expected in Autumn 2009.
Between 20 April and 27 July 2009 members of the public, service users and staff can share their views online at www.westkentpct.nhs.uk, download information or sign up to attend an informal discussion. People can also request information by telephoning 01732 375200, ext 5401.
And its taking years to create different services for PD spectrum sufferers properly to help their lives of pain .
In Birmingham UK although there remains a PD and BPD specialised service (Main House) it took in only recently 13 people ...Of its 24 beds were 11 empty ..
24 beds .......Hold that as a figure ..
The UK (2008) population estimate is 10 -13 percent of Personality Disorders . People highly damaged by backgrounds without supplies of empathic therapies. In Sheffield out of a population of 533,000 there are 16000 personality disordered people . Not all severe but enough will be to create self destructive patterns of life ..
Mr. Ivan Lewis: Personality disorders (PDs) are common conditions, although there is a considerable variation in severity, and in the degree of distress and dysfunction caused. The Department does not hold the requested information centrally, but research studies currently indicate a prevalence of 10 to 13 per cent.
The way the UK manages Personality Disorders is not through remedial therapies across its spectrum but by pushing it into the community without resources and invariably through the criminal justice system .
The incidence in the sentenced prison population is around 64 per cent. for men and 50 per cent. for women. Estimates of the prevalence of personality disorders in psychiatric hospital populations vary between 36 to 67 per cent.
There are a some few people begining to react to this partly invisible social holocaust and the there may be a possibility of an independent UK survey to map provision and experiences across the UK from a PD and BPD perspective .. That will be reported on here should it happen .
Tabi though stays at home mainly - keeps away from a world which is a nightmare of poor provisions . Human treatment has almost disappeared
Only the fairies and few friends care now ..
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