Sharing the excitement and rewards of becoming and being a mental health nurse

Sometimes the most challenging and interesting facts come from the most unlikely of places. I’m not sure if the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is on your reading list or email alerts, but it is on mine. I find their audits and research fascinating. Last week was a case in point; the ONS released a whole load of data about how the lives of young people today differed from the lives of their parents and grandparents. You can read the full report here. It was interesting to see that while young people today travel the world more, lead healthier lives and use new technology in ways never dreamed of by their grandparents, they are more likely to still be living with their parents, more likely to be in debt and more likely to feel lonely. 

The latter point made me stop and think. We usually associate loneliness with the older generation. The ONS report notes that 16-24-year olds were almost three times more likely to feel lonely than those aged 65 or older. Those young people living in cities are more likely to be lonely compared to those who live in towns or villages. Something's for young people haven’t really changed though. They can legally undertake part-time paid work from the age of 13, at 16 they can consent to sexual activity and at 17 they can hold a driving licence. One area that has changed over the last 35 years is the age of criminal responsibility. Currently, in England, the age of criminal responsibility is 10 years old – no child under this age can be found guilty of a criminal offence. Up until 1998 there was a presumption that a child aged under the age of 14 did not know the difference between right or wrong and therefore they could not be capable of committing a criminal offence – a highly contested assertion.

I remember well the dreadful murder of James Bulger (aged 2), by John Venables and Robert Thompson (both aged 10) in 1993. I was working at what was then called Mental Health Services of Salford (now Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust) as a Director of Corporate Development. I had just moved from being a Service Manager for the Regional Specialist Mental Health Services, which included the Adolescent Forensic Service (the Gardener Unit). The main child forensic consultant psychiatrist was one Sue Bailey (now Dame Sue Bailey). I had worked with her for a number of years, both in commissioning the original inpatient service, and as the Service Manager responsible for the total forensic services. 

At the time of the James Bulger case, Sue Bailey was also a Home Office forensic psychiatrist. She interviewed John Venables before his trial and at his trial testified that he unequivocally knew the difference between right and wrong. Both boys were convicted of James Bulger’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. It was a time of high expressed emotion by many on both sides of the innocent child versus child criminal divide. It was also an early excursion for me into the nature of evil, something I was later to pursue as part of my supervisory session with my PhD supervisor, the late and great Professor Joel Richman, see here.

I mention these events and memories as last week also saw the first ever Mental Health Nurses Day. The day was organised by the RCN Mental Health Forum, partly in response to the drop in numbers of those entering and staying in the profession. The NMC reported a fall in mental health nurses from 90,693 in 2014 to 88,821 in 2018. The day was aimed at ‘myth busting’ those issues that might stop people from entering the profession.  Much of the approach was to use social media to give a voice to those whose positive experience of becoming and being a mental health nurses might counter some of the more negative and lurid stories still to be found in many parts of the wider media reports of mental health services. It was an opportunity to really raise the profile of mental health nursing. 

Judging by the activity of Twitter (I didn’t look at other SoMe services), the day was a success. I posted a couple of tweets using the #mhnursesday2019 hashtag and was both inspired and comforted by the many tweets I read during the day. Like many of those who posted their stories, I had enjoyed a similar range of experiences. Unlike today’s young people, who on average leave the family home aged 23, I left when I was 16, was married and had my first daughter when I was 20. I ‘fell’ into nursing when it was a better tax position to be student nurse than a nursing assistant. I never looked back. I have worked in therapeutic communities, acute and community mental health services, older people’s services and forensic mental health care. I have been a practitioner, a manager, and more latterly in my career a mental health academic. As a mental health nurse academic, I have travelled the world, published many peer reviewed papers and presented my research at conferences as far apart as Australia, China, US, UK and much of continental Europe. 

It’s not always been a rosy experience – I worked hard and often made decisions about maintaining a healthy work-life balance that I’m not proud of and which may have hurt some of those I dearly loved. That said, would I do anything different? I don’t know if I would. Whilst today’s young people have a very different journey into adulthood than the one I experienced, I would recommend nursing as a career worth considering for anyone, and, mental health nursing is a fantastic place to really make a difference to the lives of others. I can guarantee it will make a positive difference to your life as well.