There was this and he got lost actually for four days. He went missing. Yeah, which was terribly worrying. He went missing from a friend’s house. We went visiting and they had a little bit of a tiff and he just walked out of the front door. And we thought he was just going out and coming back, and after five minutes it sort of dawned on me that he wasn’t coming back for some reason. So I went looking for him. And of course, the neighbourhood is one that I don’t know very well, and she unfortunately lived in a house which was like at crossroads of four or five roads. So when I went looking for him and he wasn’t in sight, I didn’t know where to go quite honestly, because there were so many roads that you could go down. So I thought maybe he was trying to make his way home, so I left. And I came back and he wasn’t at home. And then I visited the pubs that he knew around the neighbourhood and he hadn’t been there. And he didn’t come back, and so, by eleven oclock at night I had to report him to the police because he wasn’t anywhere that we knew, you know. And he was gone for four days, in north London. So, that was a horrible time I remember, my daughter and I had really a terrible time because we were looking everywhere. I was, I didn’t dare really leave the home in case someone phoned or he phoned, and she went looking everywhere and the police knew about it but I don’t think they did very much. And the CPN did send out a fax actually to all hospitals in case -and he was actually taken to one hospital, the [name of hospital], and he went absconded. They checked him out, because he was found in the street, I think, and then he went, they left him on a trolley, because they wanted to check him again because he couldn’t tell them his name and he couldn’t really communicate anything. And he went missing for another 24 hours from then. So.

They didn’t detect that he was in need of help?

No, no. They didn’t. In spite of the fact that there was a fax. And in spite of the fact that the police were supposed to have a computerised, you know, -that he went on the national computer actually, but when they picked him up and took him to hospital, nobody had the wits to check whether there was anybody of that description sort of, reported missing, you know. And so we spent four days really, four days which were horrible because, you know, when you don’t know what happened to somebody who is not quite capable of navigating the streets and the transport system and all that, it’s worrying. But then he turned up at the friend’s house on the Friday night. And they phoned me and I picked him up from there laughs. And he was a bit dirty, dehydrated, had lost a bit of weight, but no harm had come to him, somehow.

One day I was working and I was 16 miles away. And he really, really -ran off and my sister rang up and my daughter’s really upset. And I rushed back and then, and I got back and I done, -hadn’t had anything to eat all day. So I said, ‘Oh I’ll just quickly do a jacket potato in the oven and then we’ll go look for him. And I said, ‘Oh I’ll quickly hang my washing out as well. And she said, ‘How can you eat and hang your washing out?’ And I said, ‘I’ve still got to do it. No one is going to come and do my washing and my ironing, and cook me a meal and clean and whatever, or sort my finances out. I’ve still got to do all of that, you know. And if I don’t eat for 10 minutes then I’m going to be in hospital myself. So, you learn that you have to still, -it doesn’t mean you don’t care or anything, but you’ve still got to do your day to day chores, to carry on.

Regarding the caring that you provide can you describe a typical day to me? What is a typical day like for you?

My typical day if we sit the two of us at home, then both of us will argue about something or another. There is nothing worth arguing about, it’s nothing in it. It’s usually about eating. She has diabetes but will not like to eat. Instead of getting up at 6 am, today she got up at 5.30 in the morning and she kept working and at 9 am she had an appointment for her diabetes. She did not worry about the time but starting arguing. To get my Mrs out of the house there are arguments and to get her back into the house there are arguments. If someone came and sat in the house then she does not worry.

So how do you have to help?

I have to keep reminding and nag her. If I keep doing the nagging then she gets depressed, she starts crying and her mind does not work. I have to say gently that, ‘I am not telling you off but I am telling you about the time. I tell her, ‘Look at the time. We can come back and do the housework when we get back. I do not want you doing the work. We can do the housework when we get back. When I say that she says no you do not need to do the work I have to do the work. If we do not go out of the house then its sayonara [everything is ok].

So he’s on all this really strong medication, which I live with the side effects of it 24 hours, 7 days a week. The psychiatrist doesn’t live with it. When he’s in crisis as they say, or he’s really bad, I’m the one that lives with it. I know when he’s really bad and I know when he’s not so bad. And I only try and call for help with the crisis team or the health, when I know he needs help. I wouldn’t be wasting my time or theirs if I didn’t need help. And then they’ll go in and see him once every eight weeks or, do a so called assessment, see him for five minutes. And that really, really frustrates me then because I think, your assessment’s crap basically, because you’ve seen him for five minutes. I’ve lived with him for the past eight weeks. I’ve heard how many times he’s talked about suicide. How many times he’s got all his tablets out. How many times he talks about killing himself and this, that and the other, and giving him another set of medication isn’t helping, you know. They’ve got side effects, strong medication. They’re not doing anything. He needs different kind of help. And then so, sometimes they’ll go, ‘Oh what do you think?’ And so I’ll go, ‘Well I don’t think the medication’s helping. I think he needs more one to one help. Then they go, ‘Well anyway, Adam, here’s your tablets. And you just think, ‘Why are you asking me?’ It’s like a slap in the face.

She refused to take medication and I wasn’t strong enough to persuade her and she wouldn’t take it anyway and in the end I had to have her sectioned, which was horrific, where they had to physically pick her up and take her, kicking and screaming.

How did that feel?

That felt awful. It felt terrible. However, when she got there she just did’ like if she’s come on a holiday and she treated the place, she sort of went back to work, she was, what she was doing was before, -she’s a very regimented woman, she had a schedule and nobody can change it and that involves her self care, prayers, exercise and walks etc and she was walking in the park near drug addicts, alcoholics and if they say anything and she in her mental health, she would say things and I was always worried about her and she was letting people in, who she didn’t know and then she went back to her work, who got rid of her, forced through the security system a few times, so a number of things were happening and she wasn’t letting family in, the other kids.

Now this I learned later, that tests, if someone, an incident like that taking place, it’s for them to -the clinician’s responsibility is to do a test to find out why this boy reacted, or anybody reacted. If they had done a test, then they would have found out that he wasn’t complying with the medication. That is the reason for this violent behaviour. When it happened the second time, about a year later, something like that, same sort of thing, he hit me on my head and there were bruises’ and then he ran out without me. Then my wife was there, my daughter wasn’t there. My wife said I will call the police to be honest with you, he had carried a big bunch of keys and threw the keys down. Ran out of the house, beat up a fellow who was doing his gardening innocently, and then that fellow has rung the police. We also had rung the police. When the policeman tried to get hold of him he had a swing at the policemen. I think the policeman avoided it, the blow, and he was in hospital. Sorry he was taken to the local police station. Police came and said he’s with us now etc. This is a while ago. I sent him something to eat because he hadn’t eaten, you know. I thought it was maybe this. So later on we found, -when this happened he was living with us-, upstairs. I went and looked in the room, there’s about eleven days medication untouched. That’s the reason for this. There’s a thing called level test they take to see how much medication is in his blood system. They know whether he’s been taking it or not. So that, then I told the consultant this is the set up, then I suppose, I don’t know whether she agreed or not with my reasoning. Anyway, we knew it was the reason, because it happened subsequently.