2nd September, 2024, another anniversary.

I first met Sally Mungall on the 2nd September, 2021. I had responded to the invitation to attend an art therapy appointment at CAMHS, Bramblys Drive, Basingstoke with a fair amount of scepticism. I didn’t understand why I had been given access to an art therapist when what I really needed was professional insight into Meg’s mental health issues and an objective appraisal of my own parenting approach. I had made a number of informal requests through Meg’s therapist, Mark Birbeck, that I have an opportunity to meet with a trained clinician to explore the possibility that intergenerational trauma might have been insidiously passed down the family line and inherited by my daughter. I had rightly been critical of others and their contribution to Meg’s difficulties but wasn’t beyond self-reproach. If I was unconsciously handing over the psychologically damaging baton of ancestral traumas then I needed know. The process of understanding and improving of family relations is usually covered in the CAMHS setting through what is called ‘parent work’. What was about to be offered to me was NOT ‘parent work’. I was about to embark on a deeply invasive and, ultimately, catastrophically damaging psychological journey.

The setting for that psychological journey was always the same from the first appointment on the 2nd September, 2021, until the last appointment on the 16th December, 2021. Art therapy sessions were always carried out in the same room that spoke little of creative expression or communication beyond the meagre trove of pencils and pastels and paper on a nearby shelf. I hid my contempt for the environment and focused on Sally, measuring her with my trained artist eye for detail. She was comfortably dressed for her job, working with children and adolescents, encouraging expression through art. Giving children the opportunity to be creative means allowing them to be messy. Art therapy is typically described as a therapeutic practice that combines art and psychology to develop self-awareness, explore emotions and process difficult and unresolved trauma and conflict. It is particularly effective in helping young children. Psychologist and author, Cathy Malchiodi says, ‘Drawing, playing and pretending are the natural work of children’.

There was one important aspect of Sally Mungall that remained hidden from me during that first meeting. The late summer of 2021saw the UK in tentative recovery from the grip of the Covid 19 pandemic and many NHS staff still felt obliged to wear face masks. I never saw Sally’s face during that first meeting. Indeed, she wore a mask throughout most of the time I spent in her company and remained largely inscrutable, her true expression veiled and ambiguous. There is much to make of the mask and how it played a part in the events that were about to unfold with such devasting consequence and I will write about this in detail later. For the time being I projected her face onto the cloth and imagined a farmers wife with a brood of muddy children and an extended family of chickens, pigs and cows. She didn’t immediately appeal to me as a therapist and I found myself again questioning the rationale for art therapy.

Sally tried to persuade me to use the art materials in room but I refused. I explained to her that I was a trained artist and that any work I was likely to produce in therapy would be contrived and ‘professionalised’. She initially accepted my refusal and we continued to discus Meg and my role as a single dad and main carer. I talked at some length  about the family history, my split and eventual divorce from Meg’s mother and then gave an account of my struggles with various institutions including schools, medical centers and hospitals while advocating on behalf of my daughter. It has been my continual misfortune to have met more than my fair share of highly ambitious but shockingly incompetent people charged with the care, supervision and welfare of my daughter. The sad truth is that far too many people that are in positions of responsibility should not be there. I disparagingly refer to them as ‘wannabes’. Meg has regularly been underserved and her mental health needs casually dismissed. She was even misdiagnosed by her GP who insisted her anxieties were a manifestation of asthma. There were too many occasions when asthma inhalers did not help her breathing difficulties which led to emergency trips to Basingstoke hospital. Meg suffered with repeated bronchial infections and daily esophageal spasms along with other posture problems associated with leg ligaments and fallen arches which meant many additional visits to hospital for therapies and invasive procedures. And then there had been the often contradictory criticism levelled at me by the schools Meg attended. On the one hand I was regarded guilty of over-parenting and then on the other hand accused of not taking my daughter’s education seriously. The truth was that I had long suspected that Meg was autistic and struggling with school environments but nobody wanted to give credence to or accommodate the possibility of any neurological issues. I was attentive and diligent with regards Meg’s education and made good use of my own teaching skills by home schooling my daughter when she was absent through illness. Meg later passed 8 of her GCSE exams with good grades.

By the time I found myself sitting opposite Sally Mungal I was disillusioned and frustrated. I was exhausted as a result of my duties as single parent and main carer. Indeed, I was already perilously close to a mental breakdown but didn’t know it. What I did know was I didn’t trust anyone. I had brought Meg to CAMHS following the advice of the last consultant who examined Meg at Basingstoke hospital who determined that the majority of her health issues were the result of psychological problems. I had already brought Meg to CAMHS, Basingstoke almost a decade before and been disappointed with the service. Here we were, come full circle, with no realistic alternative but to engage with CAMHS again. I was not optimistic. There had been no discernable improvement in Meg’s mental health presentation despite her psychotherapist’s intervention and now there was just three months left before Meg reached her 18th birthday and the inevitable discharge from CAMHS. We were racing towards the edge of a precipice and I was feeling desperate. I felt obliged, through necessity, to trust Sally. If I was going to be of service to Meg I needed to put faith in the reliability of someone I knew little to nothing about. I could only look into her eyes and agree to meet again in two weeks.

That proved to be a costly mistake, an error of judgement that almost cost me my life.

I said goodbye to Sally Mungall and returned home. Sally returned to an office to write up her therapy progress notes. Progress notes are the clinical records made by therapists of their patients treatment and care. Following repeated requests for medical records I was eventually given access to most of, but not all, Sally Mungall’s progress notes made after each art therapy session between the 2nd September and the 16th December 2021. It was some time later in 2022 that I finally had an opportunity to read her progress notes made immediately after that session on the 2nd September 2021. I will fully unpack those progress notes in 'A Murder Of Conspirators', the sequel to Four And Twenty Dead Crows, to be published here later in 2025. In the meantime it needs to be understood that what I discovered through reading those progress notes, particularly those written following that first meeting, was truly alarming.