Silver Linings Playbook, A Case History

Last night I watched the perfect date movie for manic depressives, the world over. “Silver Linings Playbook,” an Oscar winning film framed in the conventions of a Hollywood rom-com, is a story of the transcendent power of love. Pat (Bradley Cooper) returns from the horrors of mania to a world, which offers him the gifts of beauty and pain. We watch him re-adjust to life beyond the order and routine of a psychiatric hospital; a life minus his wife, his job and his own house, spent in his parents home, the bosom of familial love and contradictory realm of escape and frustration. “They fuck you up, your Mum and Dad…” (Philip Larkin). He is the bloom of their seed, the psychology of blame.
Watching the first half of the film, I was both surprised and somewhat piqued by the emotions it evoked in my irritable psyche. For the verbal “rantings” of the characters, especially those of the protagonist, annoyed me almost to the point of
contemplating turning off the noise and tuning into a more calming vibe; the space cadet of my thoughts eager to land. However, my commitment to accessing products of popular culture which centralise mental health awareness, kept me going. I am glad that it did. For, my reaction to listening to highly expressed emotion and Bradley Cooper’s pacey and urgent delivery of lines offered me insight into the difficulties encountered by the loved ones and supporters of people undergoing episodes of mania. When unwell, have I been as annoying as “Pat?” Probably. For the first time I saw myself through my Mother’s eyes. No wonder she often cries. No wonder she challenges.
The verbal battering I experienced in the first part of the film was, subsequently, replaced by a warm glow. Rom-com credentials raised their frothy heads and manipulated me into empathising with the characters. The introduction of a love interest for Pat, played with depth by Jennifer Lawrence, provided a counter-point and stressed the view that “madness” is not about chemicals and, rather, affects everyone in relative degrees.
Although the film did not say anything new and its format and structure were overwhelmingly traditional, “Silver Linings Playbook,” peeled away the mask of mental ill health and revealed that regardless of the issues we experience, people are more alike than different and possess similar needs and desires. Bipolar is a barrier to love, only if we make it. Silver linings exist for us all. In order to experience them, however, we must believe.

BOOKWORMS BEWARE-My novel, containing themes of mental health, recovery and LOVE is available on AMAZON and from other retailers. Buy THE GENERAL PARALYSIS OF SANITY by LOUISE M. HART and engage with your silver lining!

Tripping-out in Glasgow!

Yesterday, was my Mother’s 70th birthday. Some might argue that surviving seven decades of life on earth is a tribute to her resilience. I say, thanks Mum-without your love and support…I would not be here!
Glasgow City Centre is a beguiling place, over-powering in the heights of architectural splendour, it encompasses passers-by in heartfelt hugs and listens to the voice of difference. Self-expression is permitted, there; poverty and homelessness, however, are forever near. And, where economic destitution presents, depression often rears his head and roars, in fear. Mostly, however, Glaswegians smile and we all know that smiles are deadly in their contagiousness.
We visited Glasgow yesterday, cracking our lips with the force of a smile or a few. Mum and me, plodding the pavements like Les Dawson’s Cissy and Ada to a post-modern generation. “Ladies,” with baggage and noses looking for a bargain, appetites for pleasure and anxious to avoid the potential disaster of returning home with empty bags. Together, we browsed until my Mother, eventually chose a birthday present. She chose and I paid, happy to express my love for her and reduce my own bank balance.
Following our shopping we indulged in a taste of, “posh nosh,” fish and chips at, “The Chippy Doon the Lane,” a fish restaurant rendered aristocratic among the throng of Glasgow chippies. The meal did not merely fill a hole, but built a temple of contentment within my bruised persona. Like ointment, it soothed the inflammation and allowed me to rest my tired feet beneath a table.
Returning home in the evening, I collapsed upon the sofa. Last night, I slept well. Today, I am still smiling.

The General Paralysis of Sanity, by Louise M. Hart

My first published novel,”The General Paralysis of Sanity,” represents the summation and completion of twenty years experience as a mental health service-user. I wrote the novel during the aftermath of, and as a reaction to, the trauma I had experienced as an in-patient of a psychiatric hospital, prisoner of mental health day-centres and (dis)charge of nurses. Sub-textually, the novel is my story-a story whose full horror will never be told. The content, however, belongs to the creation of Cat-Hater, my anti-hero, whose consciousness unfolds in the text, like the fragile wing of a butterfly released from the cruelty and inevitability of fate.
I named my character Cat-Hater, not to, “moggy bash” (my own cat features on the cover!) but, as an allusion to a character created by Philip K. Dick’s gargantuan, creative brain; “Horseloverfat,” is the star of his fantastic and mind-blowing novel, “Valis.” Ending here, however, are comparisons to Phil Dick’s work, his preoccupation with the dichotomy between madness and sanity merely reflects my own and constitutes the central theme of my book.
The reader embarks upon a psychical but bumpy ride, during which s/he glimpses the mind of someone experiencing a relapse into psychosis. Frequent lapses into interior monologues merge with depictions of an outer realm which, condemns and sentences Cat-Hater to the imprisonment of hospital. It is, however, the content of the hospital scenes, which enliven the plot and flesh-out the characters I have created. For, at this point I portray the formation of relationships between Cat-Hater and the other patients and introduce the secondary character of the novel, Nurse Parry.
Although Nurse Parry possesses all the complexities of Cat-Hater and is necessarily all flesh and blood in terms of the qualities she brings to the book, I must confess, that she was brought to life to personify the unachievable nature of complete and pure reason and rationality. The reader enters her life and inner being and experiences the illusion of being sane.
Despite its thematic darkness and painful subject matter, my psychiatrist tells me that the book is, “very funny,” and I think many people who have spent time in psychiatric hospitals will recognise elements of themselves and others in the characters and situations I describe. If you have a spare moment you can order it online from amazon or chipmunkapublishing or even request that your local book shop stocks it. Why not indulge and release your pain. Will it all end happily or will life’s imprint linger and ache?

Lessons Learned

Having completed a regular shift at a charity bookshop, I, now, feel cold and tired. The wind on the west coast of Scotland is a savage beast which can almost knock even the sturdiest of citizens off their feet and bites into the very hearts of our resilience. In the Wintertime, when the pestilence of chill and rain consumes all, but those possessed of fur coats and an iron will, it is easy to let depression strike. I shall resist; when he raises his hand, I will retaliate with blows to the keys of my laptop. I laugh within, when I consider the change in my disposition.
Twenty years wasted as a mental health service-user. Twenty years in which I experienced a side of life many either do, or wish that they did, not understand. These twenty years have taught me many lessons, some of which I would like to share.

1. Medication helps ease the symptoms of mental distress, it does not cure. Uncovering the causes of distress is hard work but, not impossible. Although psychological interventions can be useful for many people, ultimately, one has to want to recover and master the skills of mental independence.
2. Psychiatrists are as fucked-up as the rest of the human race. They have merely learned the skills of presentation.
3. Mental health workers do not REALLY care (they are doing a job, some of them very well) but can be very useful to talk to and fill-in forms!
4. Most day-centres/hospitals operate a policy of containment. They exist to monitor service-users, ensuring that we do not cross those deadly lines of demarcation. In the short-term, they can open-up the possibility of peer support. However, in the long-term, they perpetuate apathy which, is often misinterpreted to be a consequence of negative symptomology.
5. Mental health service users often flock together, like birds with tarnished wings. This is because they are socially excluded. Many have little or no family support and the companionship of friends. They do not deserve your pity or ridicule, their group friendships are indicative of a truly human (and rational) need to counteract loneliness and be accepted.
6. Recovery from mental health issues is a relative concept. If you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, you are doing okay. You do not need to be earn 100,000 a year or train to run a marathon. The book which you have always planned to write, can be written tomorrow, next year or even…never. For, even possessing the wish to write, is suggestive of the will to live. LEARN TO EXIST AND YOU WILL START TO LIVE.

I have been humbled by the support for my blog and would like to thank my followers for reading and commenting. If you have been affected by anything I have written, please contact me. I am available on facebook and twitter or you could simply subscribe to my blog. I intend to write my next post on my novel and invite you all you to learn about its themes and contents.

My Life: The Road to being Published

There is a widely held conception that everybody, “has a book, in them.” Whilst this could not be more true, most people do not write that book. I have spent my life desirous to fulfil my ambition to become a writer. Never content to be a just a person who scribbled poems upon the backs of envelopes and delineated my thoughts in notebooks framed in psychedelic doodles, I yearned for the validation of my creative spirit and to see my name in print. Now, that I have achieved this, I know that I will do so many more times. This is the beginning of a new stage in my life, a life from which I used to hide, in shame.
My first novel, “The General Paralysis of Sanity,” started life as an exercise in catharsis. Years ago, after my last and particularly traumatic admission to a psychiatric hospital, I released my pain in literary productivity. Writing my novel became a forum for encoding my negative experiences in the guise of the creation of a character who was blatantly not myself. Although not autobiographical, my novel borrowed and reconstituted elements of myself. Writing it was not always easy but, after each session on my laptop I felt rewarded and more self-confident than before I had started.
Lifestyle changes meant that I moved location and ended up living across the borders in Scotland, where serendipity surfaced and I started to see a psychiatrist who was unusually literary in his interests. Not only was Dr H interested in my novel, he actually wanted to read it. Thus, began the tides of change…
He seemed genuinely surprised that someone with my history of psychiatric suffering should be capable of writing with lucid insight about the nature of mental distress. I have always believed that he suspected that cognitive impairment would undermine my literary ability but, I have been determined not to allow my “illness” to destroy, “the real me.” Dr H claimed that my work should be published and, subsequently, gave me the details of the foremost publisher of books by people who have experienced mental health problems. I emailed my book to Chipmunkapublishing and, the rest, as they say, is history.
Today, I not only await the imminent publication of my first collection of poetry, I am, also, engaged in writing another novel. In fact I am re-engaged with life.