Bill’s Crisis assessment recommendation was acted upon almost immediately and I was offered an appointment for a ‘SOON’ mental health assessment with the CMHT ( community mental health team ) at The Bridge Centre, Basingstoke within days. That appointment was cancelled shortly after and another appointment was offered for the 7th Feb. It was less than a three week wait but I remember it still seemed interminably long.

And then the unexpected happened! On February the 2nd, the very day before I was due to meet Sally Mungall to pick up my therapy drawings, I received a telephone call from someone at CAMHS, Bramblys Drive. The woman was calling to inform me that, ‘due to unforeseen circumstances, Sally was unable to take any of her meetings that week’. My first response to this news was concern for Sally, believing she was compromised, either by illness, or, more likely, personal troubles. I voiced my concerns to the woman on the other end of the line. ‘Should I phone back next week to reschedule the meeting? I politely asked. My friendliness was met with a brusque response that I caught me off guard. I cannot recollect her actual words but I can easily recall her unfriendly tone. She didn’t seem to like my question. ‘Perhaps I should wait until Sally gets back to me, then? Is it better if I wait until somebody gets back to me to rearrange the meeting?’ I asked. ‘Yes’, she replied or words to that effect. And then she hung up leaving me with new questions. What was that all about? I wondered to myself. Had I been impolite? Had I said something inappropriate? Was this woman an overly protective colleague? Was something seriously wrong with Sally? Then my imagination tried to fill in the gaps. I already had a strong sense that something was amiss in Sally’s personal life. Some of her recent Facebook posts had telegraphed a deep unhappiness that alluded to betrayal. Indeed, one such post had made reference to infidelity and now I was reminded of a conversation that I had with Sally during one of our art therapy sessions. Sally had asked for my opinion on infidelity and I offered my own verdict on the subject of relational betrayal using my own lived experience. My former wife, Meg’s mother, had irrevocably damaged our own marriage through infidelity and I was still badly bruised by the experience. I didn’t put too much thought into Sally’s line of questioning until I started adding up the clues, her social media posts and conspicuous absence of her wedding ring after our first meeting. So that’s where I landed in my measuring of things. Sally was having serious relational issues at home and I needed to be respectful, give her space and deliver my trust into the lap of the gods. I put faith ( ill-placed, as it turned out ) in the assurances offered by the woman who had just telephoned me, that someone would call me to rearrange my meeting with Sally. I took that assurance on face value and resolved to wait until I was called. I waited while six painfully slow weeks stumbled by.

That woman from CAMHS did not call back.

Nobody from CAMHS called back.

Kirsty Henry was the Senior Nurse Practitioner assigned to carry out my ‘SOON’ mental health assessment. I arrived at CMHT early on the morning of the 8th February, somewhat cynical as I had been turned away from a scheduled appointment just 24 hours earlier. It would have been easy not to have come back at all but I’m glad I did. With hindsight I now know that Kirsty was the first mental health practitioner that I had met who was genuinely good at her job. She turned out to be a wonderfully empathic and sincerely kind woman. Kirsty was apologetic for not being available the day before, telling me that she had got the dates wrong and that she would have turned up at my home had I not kept this rescheduled appointment. Kirsty was wearing a Covid mask so only her eyes were visible to me along with her long dark hair but I noted her Scottish accent and warmed to her immediately.

A quick referral to the following NHS webpage https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/social-care-and-your-rights/mental-health-assessments/ informs the reader that a mental health assessment is a conversation between a patient and a mental health professional in order to help decide what kind of support the patient needs. A mental health assessment is ‘not a test or an exam. It is about helping you. You only have to talk about what you want to talk about. The more open and honest you are, the easier it will be to get you the right help. The conversation might cover a wide range of mental symptoms and experiences including feelings, thoughts and actions, physical health and wellbeing, housing and financial circumstances, your safety and other people's or whether anyone depends on you, such as a child or elderly relative.’

My conversation with Kirsty took almost two hours, according to my own reliable recollection. I told her about the difficulties that were current at the time, especially my responsibilities as a single father and carer to my mentally ill daughter. I went into harrowing detail about what I accurately termed as my gradually unfolding ‘mental breakdown’. There is an aversion to this term among mental health practitioners but I’m still very comfortable referring to my intense mental distress as a defacto mental breakdown. There was considerable time spent going through my personal history, recounting my life experiences from childhood to present day followed by an appraisal of my social circumstances and past psychiatric history. And all the while, Kirsty was making quiet observations of my mental state, recording details of my appearance, behaviour, speech, mood, affect, thought and perception.

The assessment focused on the subject of my therapy with Sally Mungal three times. It was me who raised the subject the first time. I was struggling with the ending of the art therapy/parent work and in a heightened state of anxiety at the apparent postponement of my meeting with Sally. The feeling of abandonment was profound and debilitating. Expressing those feelings to Kirsty was emotionally harrowing. I raised the subject a second time, explaining my fear that I might not see Sally again and that I might be denied ‘closure’. I was truly exhausted afterwards. I didn’t see the point in punishing myself any further and so resolved to draw a line under the subject. Before the mental health assessment was finally concluded, Kirsty invoked Sally a third time. I remember thinking at the time that Kirsty’s persistence on the subject seemed unnecessary. It was a thought that wouldn’t easily settle. It was a thought that was resurrected after reading the truly shocking details contained in my medical records, disclosed by Southern Health four months later.

I thanked Kirsty for her time and said goodbye. I felt reasonably assured by my assessment and thought I had good reason to be optimistic about my immediate future.