Getting back to good mental health on a community farm

Running a community farm and their own bakery has had a profound effect on the mental health of Slí Eile’s workers, many of whom had spent years in psychiatric hospital, writes Margaret Jennings

It is one of those sleety, bitter-cold mornings – when slinking further under the duvet would offer a warm refuge.

But at Slí Eile, in North Cork —a refuge of a different sort — it was business as usual.

Part of the weekly routine for the seven tenants at Burton Park, in Churchtown is to rise at 7am and face the day with purpose.

Aside from housekeeping and cooking, the tenants, who range in age from 25 to 59, spend their day working at Cuisine Slí Eile, a bakery in nearby Charleville and more recently on an organic farm established on the 50 acres adjoining the historical Burton Park house.

Structure and respectful support are the cornerstones of Slí Eile, which provides a safe and non judgmental environment for tenants, who have chosen this ‘other way’ as part of their psychiatric care.

Teresa Curtin, support worker and Catherine O’Shea making lunch using fresh produce from the farm.

As the newest tenant, 25-year-old Lauren Mc Cool, who was still within her two-week trial period when we met, says: “I was in hospital for 10 months. My psychiatrist suggested I come here; that being outdoors and staying busy would help me as I have a lot of energy. In the institution I was inside all day, smoking and lying in bed.”

So how was the transition, from inertia to rising at 7am for Lauren? “I surprised myself... my mood has lifted. There is always someone to talk to and I already have ideas of growing my own food and am learning to cook for large numbers of people.”

Tenants ‘sign up’ for their tenancy agreement after the two-week trail period and part of the daily schedule involves checking in with each other, around the large kitchen table, accompanied by staff, to review how the previous 24 hours has been for them.

The longest tenant there is 50-year-old Geraldine Hamilton, who prior to Slí Eile had been in and out of psychiatric institutions since a teenager. She says she has stopped taking most of her medication, adding: “I’m hoping to give up my last tablets soon and I will be free.”

It was her mother Joan Hamilton who founded Slí Eile: “Geraldine had her first breakdown at barely 16 and watching her deterioration over the years I felt there must be another way. Then a friend gave me a book called Toxic Psychiatry by Dr Peter Breggin. He talked about the need for a therapeutic living environment. The seed was sown. I could see if a person needed to regain their self belief when discharged from hospital they would need peer support. I felt that we needed more than what we as a family could offer Geraldine, and that was the beginning of Slí Eile, a supportive living environment with a social approach – getting up on time; budgeting; shopping and cooking, just to regain those skills.”

However, when it began as a supported social housing initiative in 2006, Slí Eile needed more structure. With the introduction of the bakery, selling high-end products locally and more recently organic produce from the farm, the benefits were two-fold: the interaction between the tenants and the broader community is helping dispel myths and stigma around being mentally unwell.

Indeed within the grand old walls of Burton Park House – which itself, somewhat symbolically, has a history of ‘recovery’ after being burnt to the ground by the Jacobites during the Battle of the Boyne in 1689 – the residents of Churchtown and further afield have attended Slí Eile events, including the harvest festival which attracted 600 visitors. Freshly dug produce from the community farm is also being sold from 10-5pm on Fridays.

The need to “absorb” people with mental health difficulties into the everyday life was pointed out by Oscar-winning actor Jeremy Irons, who is a patron of Slí Eile and who officially opened the farm with Minister Kathleen Lynch in May 2013.

Irons, who lives at Kilcoe near Ballydehob in West Cork, responded to Joan Hamilton’s request to be a patron because he believes the psychiatric system is too reliant on drugs. “It has to be about a way of building self-confidence. How can you be self confident if you’re a case number?” he said.

More recently at the Cork Person of The Year Awards event he used the opportunity to urge people to help finance the Slí Eile project so that more people could benefit from the service.

“We can’t just put away people who don’t fit into our pattern of life,” he has said. “I think what Joan Hamilton is doing - getting people back into the community where they are self-supporting, self -reliant and giving them back a life – is tremendously useful.”

Sinead Cusack, Joan Hamilton and Jeremy Irons at the

Slí Eile opening.

Catherine O’Shea was diagnosed as manic depressive aged 28 and has been “in and out 70 times to hospital” over three decades. At Slí Eile for four and half years, she says it has given her a new life.

“Joan Hamilton has changed the stigma towards being mentally unwell so much in what she has done.”

Though Catherine’s family were supportive and bought her a house in Cork, she says: “I was living in the middle of the city, yet I was totally isolated from everybody.”

“When I came to Slí Eile I had a bag of medication. I didn’t know what I was taking, I had awful mood swings. At one stage I was on 48 drugs a day. But I was at the doctor this morning and I got my medication further reduced. – I hope in time to come to be on no medication.”

Catherine, a farmer’s daughter says: “Growing up we never did anything on the farm - myself and my sisters. We just put the make-up on and the clothes and went out on the town! Now you know what I was doing yesterday – and loving it? , she adds smiling broadly: “Shovelling the manure in the wheelbarrow.”

As we sit around a wooden kitchen table it’s the same response from everyone. Making pastry, bread and scones, cooking dinners, digging the soil, harvesting the crops, feeding the herd and the chickens has built their self confidence and hope again.

To enable tenants to become “experts in their own recovery journey” the Slí Eile model employs the principles of US psychiatrist, William Glasser’s Choice Theory, based on personal choice and responsibility and subsequent transformation. It is based around progression towards a self-reliant and satisfying life within community living, the final level including identifying and planning their own long-term goals.

The project, which has seen 30 tenants participate for varying lengths of time, gets 85% of its monthly costs funded by grant support from the HSE - but as Jeremy Irons highlighted, it could do with more to expand the farm and increase tenancy numbers.

“There is a capacity for another five tenants but to do that we would need more staff, as we have one support staff on duty 24/7,” says Joan. “People are on the waiting list for 6-7 months and they could be sitting in hospital that length of time waiting to come here.”

Anyone interested can access the service through self-referral, family referral, mental health team referral or through the primary care services. “The only requirement,” she says, “is for the person to want to be part of the Slí Eile community.”

The residents sign a tenancy lease, pay rent and each contribute €65 a week towards the house kitty which pays for all overheads. The tenants also manage the kitty.

As I leave the grounds of Burton Park, cradling my organic wholemeal seed bread loaf, I’m overwhelmed by how much this model of respectful living has to offer.

www.slieilie.ie