大象传媒

Rachel Waddingham hears voices. The first time she heard them she was lying in a bed. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e so stupid鈥�, 鈥渢hey are watching you鈥�, 鈥渋t would be much better if you just ended it all鈥�. She was also convinced she was being watched, that she was at the centre of a conspiracy. She ended up dropping out of university and eventually was admitted to a psychiatric unit. 鈥淚 began to hear the alien speak to me, and that alien told me that I was a murderer, that it could control me, that it was going to make me kill people. It was a hideous terrifying voice.鈥� She was put on medication and it looked like everything was working. 鈥淚 was less troubled, less troubled by the voices鈥�, she says. After a few weeks Rachel was discharged, but was soon back in again, with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. 鈥淚 lost all hope. It wasn't so much the voices that kind of risked my life, it was this hopelessness, this sense that I'd never be part of the normal world鈥�. She tried to escape from the ward and was subsequently sectioned.

Rachel became what鈥檚 called a 鈥榬evolving door patient鈥�, in and out of hospital, sectioned multiple times. Each time she became more and more alarmed by what she saw as the lack of humanity in the system. This is Rachel鈥檚 story of being sectioned in 21st Century Britain. It鈥檚 an intimate and revealing insight into what it鈥檚 like to be a 鈥榬evolving door patient鈥�. Talking to a consultant psychiatrist, a psychiatric nurse and the lead author of a recent government review of the Mental Health Act, she challenges the status quo and considers how things might change. Rachel asks why she doesn鈥檛 have more rights to decide her own care and treatment, and explores how to break the cycle of the 鈥榬evolving door鈥� patient.

Details of organisations offering information and support with mental health are available at bbc.co.uk/actionline, or you can call for free, at any time to hear recorded information on 08000 155 998.