Mentally ill: the silent constituency
In 1990, I visited a psychiatric hospital for the first time. The 'client' we were visiting was a relation of a friend. He was middle-aged, had a profound intellectual disability, and had lived in the hospital since childhood. We were taken down a bare and gloomy corridor to a heavy door. The nurse who accompanied us opened the door with one of a large set of keys and disappeared for a few minutes.
He steered the client out in the corridor, where the poor man, clearly confused and with no verbal skills, stood for a few minutes staring mawkishly around. A bowl of mashed bananas was produced which he whooshed up. Then the nurse gave him one of the Woodbines that we had brought for him. He sucked it with massive drags that came from the bottom of the lungs. And then when it had been whittled down to near the butt-end, he inverted the still-lighting cigarette with his tongue and swallowed it whole. Two minutes later, he was brought back into the room. The nurse noted the visit down on an index card we were the first who had visited him for some time.
