Ramblings of a Scottish Student

After posing my last blog entry I randomly wondered what I had written about a year ago.  Below is the post I wrote on the 17 April 2008.

Well, here is my blog post now that I have successfully managed to make ground into my exam preparation. All my essays are completed and handed in and I have one further pre-exam diet assessment to sit on Wednesday. I have decided to take a few weeks away from the charity that I volunteer with for two reasons: I need the extra time to prepare for my exams and I need the time away to recover from my last shift.

The last shift I did was probably the hardest and toughest shift that I have done for a while and this blog entry is all about that shift. As usual I have left it gender non-specific and cut out much of the detail in order to ensure anonymity for the young people involved and to help ensure that I am not identified by anyone from the organisation.

The last shift I worked I had a particularly rough time. I went in and sat myself down and within minutes I was talking to the first young person. This conversation was to last just over an hour and would take us through legal issues to mental health problems, suicide ideation and end up with the young person telling jokes. The beginning of the conversation seemed quite straight forward and gave no indication whatsoever of what was to come. The young person was worried about some things from their past showing up on a CRB check: mainly an ASBO. I explained to them that as an ASBO is a civil sanction and not a criminal one (unless you breach the terms of the ASBO and get caught) it should therefore not show up on any CRB check that is completed, but as I didn’t have the information in front of me I directed the young person to contact the Criminal Records Bureau themselves to double check this. They seemed to be okay after this, but then started talking about wanting to be dead – this came totally out of the blue and as such I was, at first, suspicious about the story. However, professional as I am I ran with it and as the story progressed it became clear that this was no empty discussion. Quite simply, this young person had suffered years of being put down by their parent’s (who regularly told them that they were a “waste of space” an “attention seeker”, “useless”, that they “never made the right decisions” and all manner of other niceties like that). Clearly this had been drilled into them so much they were beginning to believe it. So, I spent a good half an hour trying to point out all the positives that I had seen in the short time we had been speaking, things such as simply talking about their problems that night, going to college where they were undertaking a course the enjoyed, seeking help from he college counsellor and taking other steps to alleviate their own problems (quite commendable for a young adolescent who is not yet, in law, recognised as an adult)

The young person had been told by their GP (and maybe someone with professional knowledge can comment on this bit should you read it) that they were suffering from mild depression some months ago. The young person had been offered anti-depressants (if my memory serves corrects it was Fluoxetine a.k.a Prozac) and they had refused them stating they wished them as an absolute last resort. So, after months of waiting for a referral to the Mental Health specialists and seeking help from the college counsellor the young person went back to see their GP to get the medication they had been offered. The Young Person continued by saying how the GP had now decided that medication was not appropriate and would not prescribe the young person the medication. This, I believe was the final straw that broke the camels back and led us to having our conversation.

Throughout the conversation the young person was clearly distressed and at times was on the verge of hyperventilating. Eventually, things changed and by the end of the conversation the young person had calmed down and had started to take on board all the positive things in their life that we had been talking about and we parted laughing and joking. Quite a successful encounter if I do say so myself!

Once I had finished writing up the notes and filling in the paperwork for the first suicidal young person it was not long before I was talking to another suicidal young person (in case you haven’t gathered the service we provide is carried out over the telephone, which can make experiences such as what I am about to describe twice as terrifying!). This call was to be much shorter and end in a way that was very concerning indeed. In fact, it was so concerning that it stayed on my mind for some time (even after getting an update the following day).

This time I was faced with a depressed and flat sounding young person who came straight out with “I want to end my life” – great, another one I remember thinking. So, I quickly jumped into my risk assessment and had within minutes established that this person had a firm plan for suicide which they intended to carry out that night, right down to having even written a suicide note. This got my supervisors and I very worried indeed. We quickly tried to establish as much information as we could and managed to get the callers name, age and a rough location for them. Once we’d done this we started to initiate our process for breaching the strict confidentiality policy that we operate under (more on that later). While my supervisors were busying away noting down various numbers and times I continued talking to the caller, although by this point it was getting much more difficult for us get information from them. I managed to establish though that for a significant proportion of their life (more than half) they had been subjected to systematic Sexual Abuse by a member of their family and on occasions that person’s friends joined in. We were also able to establish that this person lived at the same address as the young person and that they were currently out and due back later in the night (more likely early hours of the morning). I was unable to ascertain if there was anybody else who lived at the address who could either help or may also be at risk of abuse. This particular call only last 20 minutes and ended in one of the most upsetting ways I can imagine. The young person simply continuing to say: “Please. Help.” We got cut off.

This call happened right at the end of the shift and we hung around for a while handing it over to British Telecom and the Police (unfortunately we spent a significant amount of time arguing with the police and continually explaining the procedure that we needed them to follow – it’s not all that difficult). I (or rather all of us) left that shift not knowing whether the Police would actually do something and if so would it be in time to either stop a suicide attempt or stop any abuse that may happen when the person responsible returned later that night. It was a very long night and a very long day. Eventually in the early afternoon I had to phone the office and find out what had happened. However, there was no news as to what happened and nobody was able to find out.

Over a week later I am still none the wiser as to what happened, although I am fairly confident that the young person did’t take her own life as the method they had select would certainly have made the news and there hasn’t been anything.

Having re-read that entry it brought that shift flooding back to me.  It’s amazing what stays with you.  I wonder how both those callers are getting on a year later.  I hope their situations are far better than what they were a year ago!