It was my desire to reduce the fear and sense of isolation associated with diagnosis, increase awareness and reduce stigma sur

Memories of Mental Hospitals
1954: Weemac Private Hospital, Sydney
The Specialist, when I told him I could hear ‘voices’, politely said there were none. I wondered why he thought I had come to see him! Anyway, he decided to treat me in this, his hospital, in a Sydney suburb, I can not remember just which, though I suspect it was in Annandale. I was 22 and this was my first experience of a mental hospital.
There were some kind and friendly female nurses, with whom I played cards quite often. The doctor generally spent his mornings giving tablets to out-patients. I just remember one other male inmate, though I imagine there must have been more, who kept to themselves. I do remember being allowed to go for a walk to the local shops down the street to buy cigarettes or sweets for myself.
I do, too well, remember the electric therapy, ‘Shock Treatment’. I had to lie down on the bed in my room and the doctor fitted things I thought were sort of ear-phones over my forehead and gave me a rubber bung to bite on. Electric cords from the gadget on my head lead to a small black box with a lever, near the end of the bed. The Psychiatrist then pulled the lever up and plunged it down again. I just had time to think he seemed to be letting off dynamite, when, trembling with shock, I went unconscious. I can not remember being told what the treatment was or what it was expected to achieve at all, strangely.
There was one incident there too, involving my mother. She came to visit me and found me getting around the place all hunched up. This trouble with my back had happened as I came round out of unconsciousness from the electric therapy. I’d never seen Mum so angry. “What”, she demanded, “were they going to do about this?” At first, nothing. Then my mother insisted on ringing the doctor at his Macquarie St address. She had to fight for the phone, but finally prevailed. Rather reluctantly the doctor suggested that I go around the corner for physiotherapy, to be straightened up again.
Later Mum refused to pay the proffered bill for this, saying it was obviously the Doctor’s treatment that was at fault. Perhaps he thought we were country bumpkins who would readily pay, but he soon found that my mother could assert herself.
All told, I spent a couple of months in this hospital, till the Psychiatrist gave up and certified me insane, to be confined in whatever mental hospital would accept me, true to the laws in those days. Not just a mental illness. You were insane.
1955: The Reception Centre, Watt Street, Newcastle
There was a foreboding about this place where , as I knew, Mad people had to go. And here I was, there! A night in a Padded Cell, before being taken to Morisset to a hospital I had heard mentioned only once before and had forgotten. One certainly has his adventures, when mentally ill or mad!
1955 – 1957 and 1959: Morisset Mental Hospital
As we entered the grounds of the hospital, I saw a sign, ‘Morisset Park’. This reminded me of ‘Mansfield Park’, a novel of Jane Austen’s, which I heard of at university, but hadn’t read. I was sane enough for that thinking.

Life History
In between eating, sleeping and more shock treatment, weaving baskets at Occupational Therapy and work helping in the hospital library, time was filled in with a Psychiatrist taking your life history. I thought this would be sure to do some good, but the Doctor didn’t worry about details, such as how low honours in my degree had affected me, or the deaths in my honour year of my Sister-In-Law and favourite old Aunty. The Psychiatrists were mainly interested in my date of birth and education in general. They concluded I must have studied to hard for my years; and it was a fact that I had been promoted in primary school, so that I was a year younger than most of my education peers. The Doctors asked was I a virgin, which I was; but nothing about financial difficulties going through university. Nothing about how my parent’s pockets had been strained or how I worked in the vacations to get some extra money to add to my Teachers’ College Scholarship.
I told how the hallucinations of ‘voices’ had set in badly once I turned 21, though I didn’t remember to tell them at the time of hearing a few voices since 14. Whatever, this giving of life history filled in some time, with which I was pleased, for it at least mad me feel of some interest and importance.
Hospital Pleasure
Shyly, you get permission to leave the ward and walk around the grounds. I have a little money, so head for the kiosk. A Nestle’s chocolate, a small packet of Viscount cigarettes and a box of matches soon took all your money. There is a seat near the oval where you could sit, eat and light up. As you are by yourself, you don’t have to give any away and so reigister a bit of pleasure. Other times you walk the grounds complete, with an ice-cream cone, or nothing, for money is scarce.
1960’s, 70’s, 80’s Hunter Hospital, Watt Street, Newcastle
Periodic Admissions
If, with marked recurrence of my illness, I had to go back into hospital for a while, for months or weeks over the last 30 years, what did I do there?
After a few days in pyjamas, I am in street wear again and generally get permission to go for a walk down town. I might buy sweets or fruit at a little shop, or in Hunter Street I might have a milk shake or coffee. Perhaps I’ll buy presents for giving on birthdays or Christmas. Spending seems to compensate a bit, for my troubles. Then it’s back, via the park where I would pause for a smoke, on to the hospital for morning or afternoon cuppa. Through the week, group meetings with quizzes to stimulate the brain, discussion of troubles, exercises, art, relaxation, to music. Perhaps a bar-b-q, picnic or bus trip. In the ward a wireless, TV, record player or piano were available for use in spare time. At night especially, I might write a letter or poem. After a rebalancing of medication, the trouble is somewhat under control again and it’s home again, until next time!
Mary
Mary was a nice female patient to whom I couldn’t risk saying she was like Sally. She flared up, thinking I was not religious; but when I explained that I was interested in religion, we soon became friends. We often talked of the purpose of religion in life with a mental illness. She has since married a man in sheltered employment is keeping well. Of course, you never know when mental trouble will recur and may therefore like to be single, rather than accepting the responsibility of marriage and a family of your own, perhaps handing on mental illness too.
1977: Prince Henry Hospital, Sydney
Psychiatric Ward
I spent 3 months there, to be adjusted to a lower level of medication, after my father died and I was not well, trying to live alone. The staff were patient and tolerant and meals were very good. There was generally something doing; group meetings, or occupational therapy, games or walks near the sea, or students taking your medical history and, of course, interviews with your Doctor. I was drastically sick for a while, when they took me right off my medication so that they could start me off again on a smaller dosage of tranquilisers, to see if that was all I really needed. As it turned out, I was alright on the new dosage. I remember doing some reading there; but I was very restless for a while. Luckily, I had relatives and friends in Sydney, who would call in to see em. In fact, a niece was a trainee nurse at this hospital and used to call in frequently to see me. I shall never forget the beautiful coastal surrounds of this place, quite like Morisset near Lake Macquarie. These hospitals were in scenic, restful, ideal positions and very many buildings and grounds.
David
I was sitting alone in the common room listening to some music, when David came in and started dancing. He must have been about 15. We didn’t say anything, but I started clapping in time with the music. He like this and came over next to me and sat down. We exchanged a few friendly words and at later times he would often come to me to talk. When his grandmother came from the country to visit him, he introduced me. She said his father gave him everything and he was spoilt. I said he seemed a likeable lad, but that I had heard him screaming out in the middle of the night. The next day he came to my room, put his arm around me and lead me to the car park. He said he had prayed to God for a car and that it would be there. I had to explain that the cars belonged to people, which he didn’t seem to appreciate at all. Was he kidding me? I didn’t get a reply. Perhaps he couldn’t write, though I remember he was good at drawing comic characters. A strange little friend was David. I wonder whether he is still battling on with mental illness.
Barbara Doogue - The Journey So Far!
My journey started in 1994. I was involved in a car accident, I don’t know why but I have been told by people that a tragedy like that can trigger off thoughts from the past. After the car accident my head just kept thinking of the past and the abuse I had from some family and other people. My mind couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I thought it must be time for me to work through these issues and I arranged to see my local GP who promptly sent me to a psychiatrist.
I was very naive about seeing a psychiatrist, I was working it out, because he didn’t bulk bill, how many times I could afford to go as at that time we were having financial difficulties too. So I thought five would be enough. I still laugh at that as I still go even today.
While talking to the psychiatrist he didn’t even get into my past that I originally went to see him about, he had decided that I was suffering major depression from my present life, through difficult life events. He wanted to see me every week for the present, but then added he would bulk bill me so that was a relief.
In February 1996 I had to leave work and be full time carer for my husband who suffered from back pain and severe depression, so that in itself was hard going from seeing a lot of people daily to being at home constantly with my husband. In the end, the stress of it all, I went from seeing the psychiatrist once a week to three times a week (It proves even then I could talk.) In September that year the government brought in a rule that if you were being bulked billed you could only see a psychiatrist 52 times a year or once a week. The stress was too much, so in October I was given my first admission into a psychiatric ward. I was there 6 months. The condition of me leaving was that I had to go to marriage counselling and get some advice from them. So I did along with my husband and my 10 year old son.
We went to see the counsellors, and we talked and answered many questions for a long time. They advised us that the marriage was no good for my health and I needed to leave him. I was devastated as this was my second marriage and I already felt a failure as the first ended in divorce. So I said that I wouldn’t and believe things can change and we could make it work. I didn’t know if I loved him but he was my best friend and he needed me. So I got out of hospital and went home.
Six months later I couldn’t take the stress of looking after him anymore and watching him slowly kill himself from his morphine addiction he now had as a result of the back pain.
So I said to him that we needed to separate, but I still wanted to see him. A few days after that, he was in the bathroom being sick (which happened quite often because of the pain and the medication), I went into the bedroom to tidy the bed and found a note under the pillow. It was a suicide note, so then I realised why he was being sick and rang the ambulance.
Shortly after that he moved into his own flat nearby. We saw each other daily but I was home after school so I could have much needed time with my son.
One morning after my appointment with my psychiatrist I caught the bus to his flat and when I opened the door that is when I saw him lying on the floor with a note near by saying he couldn’t take it anymore and that I would be better off without him and he was sorry.

So that started my five years of going in and out of hospital. A short stay for me would be a month. All together if you added up the time spent in and out of hospital over the five years, it works out to be 2 and half years. With about 30 ECT (Electro Convulsive Therapy) and a few stays in the lock up ward as they believed I would harm myself. I also overdosed about half a dozen times and self harmed quite regularly.

Through all that time I had a lot of diagnoses from major depression, post traumatic stress disorder, bi-polar, borderline personality disorder and obsessive compulsive order. The only diagnosis they haven’t used on me is schizophrenia and that is purely because I don’t tell them about the voices in my head.

You know for four years mental health services kept telling me there was nothing I could do it was a chemical imbalance, take your medication. It was hereditary, take your medication. You will be like that the rest of your life, take your medication. You will be in and out of hospital the rest of your life, take your medication. I believed them; I mean why would I not, they are the experts.

So what was the turning point? Firstly I had a psychiatrist who worked out I would be better just with one private psychiatrist (I had lost my original psychiatrist because I self harmed after he had said he would not see me again if I did). So I saw the public ones which meant a new doctor every three months; it was like starting again every three months, repeating my story. So she decided to see my privately and that helped a bit. She decided at one time to refer me to a psychologist even though when I had left Glenside they referred me to one but I was refused as they said it wouldn’t help. So she put the forms in and I was referred to the local hospital psychologist and he did his review and it came back to my doctor with a note saying, he wouldn’t work with me as he didn’t see that it would help me.

Again my psychiatrist was at a loss of what to do for me. She thought she would give it one more try and refer me to a psychologist in the Salisbury mental health office and see what happens. Well, to everyone’s amazement, she said yes. I always believed she liked challenges. And that was the day my life turned around.

The first meeting I had with her she said, she will only work with me if I was prepared to do the work as she didn’t have time for time wasters. She would do ten sessions with me and then review. I ended up working with her for 2 ½ years until I was discharged from mental health services.

So what did she do? She treated me like a normal person, talked to me like an equal. And from day one she never gave me the idea that I can’t do anything about my illness, that I was going to be like this for the rest of my life; she showed me I had options and consequences for my actions and that I could have a productive life if I worked hard enough. That’s what I did slowly; and slowly, one step forward and two steps back, then one step forward and one step back until I was moving forward more than back.

I had to learn that it was not my fault my husband killed himself; I did not give him the tablets one by one. I had to learn that yes I am the biggest sook in the world, but there are ways I can learn to communicate my feelings and desire and wants from people that I could manage. I learnt strategies to use when I felt down or suicidal, things to do when I was angry or overwhelmed; it was slow but it happened eventually.

When I first started seeing my psychologist I stayed at home most of the time only coming out to shop and pay bills once a fortnight, or go for any medical appointments. Other than that I lived in my house, my cave as I called it. She likened me to Miss Haversham from great expectations where she lived in her house for 30 years in her wedding dress because she was jilted on her wedding day.

So slowly I took baby steps to get out. My first major outings were I would walk to my local MacDonald’s and read the paper while having breakfast, so I was getting out of the house, just not spending time with people. Then I started op shopping; something I learned and l became to love and still love, then gradually doing a few social things with an organisation called GROW and then soon after attending GROW meetings and then working voluntary with the GROW fieldworker. My psychologist once told me just because I was on the pension didn’t mean I couldn’t work for it.

Since then I have grown an awful lot, when I think there was a stage in my life where my support system was regular visits to the psychologist, regular visits to my psychiatrist, a case worker from mental health, a lot of medication and frequent hospital admissions, to now I work part time, I see a psychiatrist once a month (as I am training her!!!) and very minimal medication, which through to things happening in my family life I have only just gone back on.

As I said at the beginning, this is my journey and it continues; I get stronger each day and learn new things. I appreciate what I have gone through because it has made me the person I am today. I believe a better person than I was.

Richard McLean – An excerpt from his book ‘The Shrink’

I remember first walking down a long lino corridor that leads to the psychiatric inpatient unit, when I was lucky enough to have the experience of being a ‘consumer consultant’ for a time, with a psychiatric service.

Hearing testing, Eye care, the dentist, the doctors, and even the palliative ward where people go to pass over, are all located together in the hospital. However, in a seemingly symbolic way of representing the theme in society, the mental health ward is separate, isolated, distanced.
It’s my first day on the job as a Consumer Consultant. My autobio­graphical book, ‘Recovered, Not Cured, a journey through schizophrenia’, changed my life, and was the biggest job application I think I’d ever written.
My new peer, M, points out the Electro- Shock therapy rooms as we go through locked door after locked door, to which I now have the key, or more accurately, electronic swipe card. I had assumed that shock therapy had ended around the time of ‘One flew over the Cuckoos Nest’. There was a lot to learn.
Walking inside, I felt a pang of guilt I was intruding; I had never been in a psychiatric ward. A lot of the people I met however, did not seem as ‘sick’ as I remember being.

I spent a lot of time in that place... Yet I’ll never forget my first impression.

It’s a pleasant warm day, yet I have a long sleeved shirt on, to impress, the kind Mum would refer to when she would always suggest, ‘Wear one of your nice shirts’, to family functions, instead of the art-school-bleck-pop-punk I usually wore.
The most obvious thing about the psychiatric ward is what was referred to as the ‘Fishbowl’, or nurses/doctors station. It’s a long, central room that is behind locked doors and huge panes of glass.
It’s where the computers are, where the doctors and nurse hang out, where the cigarettes are rationed out-one an hour to some- and the place where I painfully witnessed person upon discordant person crave for attention through the thick glass, often in futility.

There are long corridors which lead to tiny rooms, each with a bolted down single bed and a small window. There is no décor or decorations. Just plain walls and place to store some clothes.

Outside in the courtyard, there are a few plastic chairs and two tables. This is where most people sit and endlessly smoke what cigarettes they can muster, (or can afford), and look over the working class suburb in the west of Melbourne, a place itself saturated in stigma.

They pendulate between this environ­ment, and the free-of-stimuli (except the TV), lounge that is inside, looking into the fishbowl. Meals were on time, and everyone lined up with plastic plates and utensils. There was an increasing amount of art from arts therapy on the walls, which I thought needed to be budgeted for much more.

Everything is bolted down, secured, or too heavy to pick up, so nothing can be used as a weapon. The carpet is fairly grim, and the chairs tainted with piss, mostly from Slavika, (name changed). I had a soft spot for Slavika, a long-term inpatient.
Here, psychiatric drugs are used to treat the symptoms of ‘mental illness’. They are also used to make the person more manageable.
But oh, the wonderful conversations I had in there. RD Laing’s term ‘acutely empathic’ comes to mind.
Time there for a person varies, yet is supposed to quite short-from 5 days up to two weeks. The people working in the field, from psychiatrists, to clinicians, to social workers, and consumer consul­tants, worked hard, with limited resources-and the beds were almost always full. It sat ill-at-ease with me though, when I would sit in on staff meetings, and the quantity of in/out people would be recorded and monitored, as if by a machine-like entity.

This time in the ward is enough time for the clinicians to drug the person enough that their symptoms recede or disappear. Enough time to place people into a frame of mind, where they will fit into society with more grace and less burden. Drug company reps would regularly visit the staff, with all amount of pens, post it notes, and food discussing the benefits of the latest anti-psychotic from particular drug companies, to the new psychiatrists.

Any epoch of time in that place would make you feel discordant. Sometimes I left there walking up the long lino corridor back to my office with tears in my eyes and anger in my heart, and a feeling of relief I didn’t ever have to endure that environment whilst I was ‘psychotic’.
Despite these ideal time frames, good old Slavika, has lived in the inpatient unit for nearly two years. She has a dual disabil­ity I am told-she has a mental illness accompanied by an intellectual disability.
There is simply no-where for her to go. So here she stays, watching the affected and often familiar people come and go over the months, and walking up to the fish bowl, pleading for cigarettes. I wish I had a dollar for every time she asked to see her case manager, or be allowed to walk to the shops.
Seclusion is a room with a mattress. It is supposed to be used in the context of ‘least restriction’, and only when the patient is uncontrollable, actively sui­cidal, or as the last resort to treatment. It’s a small room, with no clock or chair, just a bed with restraints.

To control Slavika, she is threatened with seclusion. ‘If you don’t behave-you’ll go in there!’ one of the high up workers says. To be honest, the worker is trying to run a ward with limited resources, not enough funding, and also try and look after all the other people in there. She has no choice. Yet it made me sad that the threat of seclusion would make Slavika fall back into line.

So she obeys. She is a solidly built European heritaged woman with huge googly eyes, always fondly calling people ‘Daahling’, and kissing and hugging everyone. I have seen and heard her being dragged to that seclusion room... And does she pack a lungful...an animalistic purge so raw, and powerful, makes you think twice to not pay her the attention she direly needed when she asks to see her case manager.
It seemed her dream to be married, and she was fond of me. Another client whom must have been familiar with her told me to tell her I was married to avoid the flirting and adoration from her-which I did-and she rarely called me ‘Daahling’ again.
I always feel awkward when she asks me to see her case manager-that futile lament-the correct answer is to say: ‘Slavika, the outside world doesn’t care about you-you are forgotten, trying to reach a nurse or your doctor to get you out of here or even take you for a walk to the milk bar is futile. Just accept that you will be locked up forever, because in actual fact Slavika, I am helpless. My hands are tied, you are helpless, and the staff are too.’ The staff did all they could...There were simply not enough resources. But a persons home should not be an inpatient unit.
Validating my own clichéd bigotry for a moment, I think to myself she looks ugly, sounds stupid, looks like this is where she belongs at first glance. I’m angry with myself. But looks and sounds can be deceiving.
One day she appears in the courtyard carrying a Bible and ripping the pages out-I asked her to stop, for destroying books, in my mind, was an abomination. She insists everyone take a page. She is making noises and looking ugly, she invades peoples space violently thrusting them pages.
Then she moulds into something else all together by saying, ‘The people here need to be more spiritual’.
Months after this the most beautiful piano music, a classical piece, emanated from the coffee/art room. ‘Who’s playing that piano?’ was the discussion in that moment. After walking up - there she was, gracefully yet passionately belting out a quite complicated concerto.
This was a person who was part of the character of the ward, I will never, ever forget her.

Yet the first person I met on the ward was someone else all together.

I only met him once. I wonder, as I do of a lot of people, where he is now-if he is even alive, and was he ever validated to find contentment?
I walk out onto the grass in the sunshine, and see a young bloke sitting looking out to the landscape, in these western suburbs of Melbourne. It will have been the first psychiatric patient I speak to, the first of thousands in my short lived career in that particular role.

‘Hi!’, I say, ‘Mind if I sit down?’ He looks away after seeing the photo ID around my neck, thinking I am a clinician, in my ‘nice’ shirt.

‘I’m the new consumer Consultant’, I say. He asks what it is, and the moment I tell him I have schizophrenia and am there to listen to him, his rapport and features are instantly welcoming-this is usually the response from clients whom feel they can relate to someone who has experienced similar experiences.
He has negative words tattooed on his arms in an old english font. I’m shocked to see the state of his wrists and under his forearms. They have deep wounds all across them, from years of self harm. I don’t look again.
I am instantly stoic-I can handle anything-and we chat.
We chat about a creme he has heard of that reduces scar tissue, ‘You should see how people look at me on the train’, he says in disdain.
He originally went to the Alfred hospital because he decided, and believed, he was going to kill himself. One look at his violent and unco-operative past however, the staff denied him access to the hospital, literally throwing this meth-amphetamine addicted young man onto the streets.
He retold how he crossed the road, and walked straight to the shops, found the first sharp thing he came across, a fluo­rescent light, smashed it, and began to slice up his arms. Once more.
With no more money to satisfy his addiction, and years of being in and out of psychiatric inpatient units with no relief, I’d imagine he looks at the deep futile blood clotting wounds up his arms, and curses his bodies durability.
He told me he made his way to a mates place where he takes a whole tray of Zyprexa, the anti-psychotic prescribed to him. His mate finds him when he arrives home some time later, and calls an am­bulance. He is un-conscious. The ambos quickly resuscitate him, his stomach is pumped, and he is then taken ironically to the Alfred, where he regains consciousness, is whisked off to the psychiatric ward, and ends up groggily in the morning sitting in the sun next to me, on that devastatingly beautiful day.
‘The cops are after me’, he says. Ahh, I know this all too well, having been familiar with delusion in the past. I think to myself: I am the perfect candidate for this job. But I ask him why the cops are after him, validating the holistic concern of any delusion he might have, as experience has taught me there is a rhyme and reason to madness.
As it turned out, he was on a Community Treatment Order, (CTO), which meant he was legally bound to take prescribed medication, because he was considered a danger to himself and/or others. He seemed to me blandly at peace, maybe for him it was a relief to be back in the I’m sure familiar ward, back to a safe place, back to being ‘off the grid’.

Under this CTO, he had to report daily to his psychiatrist, whom then confirmed the police of his whereabouts. After his three day spree of ice, he told me that most likely the psychiatrist had reported him missing to the police. What I incorrectly assumed a delusion, turned out to be totally valid and real.

I tried to think of the most appropriate reaction and a solution.
‘Can you give your psychiatrist a call to make sure they know where you are? That way the police wont be looking for you’. He didn’t mention any family.

‘I cant’, he replied.

I could empathise with this bloke, after some of my experiences with psychiatrists, I assumed dis-trust and non-compliance with his doctors. Yet I asked anyway why he couldn’t call.
‘I haven’t got fifty cents.’ He continued staring out into the landscape.
I took him inside to ask management for a 50 cent coin to make a phone call. Clients, or ‘consumers’ as we called them, (as in a ‘consumer’ of a mental health service), can only make a call from the ward phone, at a charge of fifty cents, and all mobile phones are banned. When you’re in the ward, you’re ‘off the grid’.
I find myself looking for his nurse, or a doctor, or ANYone to help. To no avail. I ask the kitchen lady whom I might speak to. She directs me to a nurse, darting down the corridor, avoiding Slavika’s constant pleas. The nurse informs me to look on the whiteboard-every client is given a nurse under the nurses name. Each nurse has the responsibility to address around 6 people during their shift.
I have no idea who this person supposed to be helping him is, and neither does the young man. When I finally locate the nurse, and tell her the problem, I am directed to his doctor. When I find his doctor I am directed to the manager.
When I talk to the manager, and explain the situation, he seems embarrassed, even ashamed, and the young man is whisked off to the fishbowl, given fifty cents, and directed to the blue pay phone on the wall. The exchange was so swift when we get to the phone he realizes he does not know the number.
I feel helpless.
The next day I storm into my bosses office, where I propose writing an article for ‘The Age’, about the appalling state of these poor people, the total lack of understanding and financial resources. She is appreciative of my enthusiasm for the role, yet informs me of the issue of confidentiality. She tells me my job is on the line, and that it be more appropri­ate I praise or improve the service than bagging it. I found it hard to work under such limitations, the red tape and bureaucracy, and the hierarchies.
As the weeks go by, I am deeply traumatized by what I see and experience, and take these experiences home with me, angry and sad. Sometimes I was overjoyed too, let it not be forgotten to say. I had not learnt to professionally distance myself from my day job. I guess I’m not generally enabled with clinicism, we still need all types of people to contribute to the mental health crisis though.
When I go home, I battle my own illness and have great empathy for those the same as me.
I loved those people, and mostly felt I understood them. It was such a wealth of shared experiences, different to ‘the outside’, the ‘normal hum-drum world’...that opaque and ostracized little paradise of light, dark, struggling, hope, comedy, bravery, tragedy, creativity, and individualism.
Richard McLean is an author, advocate, and artist from Melbourne Australia. He has written three books, including 'The Shrink', from which this writing in 'Glimpses' was loaned; all are available from Richard’s website at http://www.egoandsoul.com.