ABSTRACT
The main purpose of this chapter, although it should certainly be of interest to the layperson and student, is really to help medical and mental health professionals to empathise with and understand the experiences of acutely psychotic patients who come, usually suddenly and unexpectedly, into their care. Here I will continue my autobiographical narrative but will also comment on how professionals reacted to and dealt with my behaviour on admission (which was in fact at first to an orthopaedic unit). In the previous chapter the narrative was largely intrapsychic; it was a story concocted within a single mind. Here that story was, to a degree, shared with others. What did they make of it? And what did they do? In what follows I will discuss the kinds of events that eased and those that worsened my condition, of which there were several. Perhaps the information that can be gleaned from my own case will be helpful in facilitating the management of psychotic clients in the future, if only in modest ways.
