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Mental health: ethnic minority experiencesArrow
Aged 40 - 49
Michael - Interview 31  

Michael - Interview 31

Age at Interview: 49
Sex: Male
Age at Diagnosis: 15
Background: Single. Ethnic background/nationality: European Ashkenazi (Jewish) (born in UK).
Brief outline:Michael, 49, describes himself as a European Ashkenazi Jew. He has been given a variety of diagnoses, including bipolar affective disorder, personality disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, learning disability, and severe mental impairment.

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Michael was admitted for observation but says there was no need to section him.

 



I was admitted to a locality mental health unit in the London of Walford [Laughter] and I at the time was admitted for observation. But actually yeah I was very pleased to be getting out of the place where I was living where I was subject to a kind of constant barrage of, of physical and verbal abuse and, and to me this was, you know, a welcome escape and it was, it didn't take much to persuade me to, to give me a break. And I was quite happy stay on in the hospital as a voluntary patient and so there was no need to section me. And there was certainly no need to surreptitiously section me. But I think it would have been impossible to stigmatise me in the way that I've stigmatised if I hadn't been section 3'd and kept in for six months without any appeal. And I think I would've been kept in much longer if there hadn't been an automatic review at that point, which would have required a panel to decide that I was genuinely so ill that I had to spend an indefinite period. And even though all this went on behind my back, I was told, you know, within a very brief, given very brief marching orders that, okay we've got to let you go.
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