How can you treat someone who hit you yesterday with dignity and respect?
| Published date | 11 June 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/MHSI-06-2018-056 |
| Date | 11 June 2018 |
| Pages | 109-113 |
| Author | Rachel Perkins,Julie Repper |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Mental health,Social inclusion |
Rachel Perkins and Julie Repper
How can you treat someone who hit you yesterday with dignity and respect?
We know that relationships are central to recovery (e.g. Perkins and Dilks, 1992; Perkins and
Repper, 1996; Russinova, 1999; Repper and Perkins, 2003). Gilburt et al. (2008) in research into
people’s experience of psychiatric hospital admission showed that:
Contrary to previous research on patients’experiences, the themes that predominated related to the
emotional not physical environment in which they stayed […] relationships form the core of service
users’experience of psychiatric hospital admission (p. 8).
Wyder et al. (2013) explored the factors that facilitated or hindered recovery and emphasised the
central importance of relationships and in particular shared humanity. Healing was hindered
where staff were seen as distant, not caring, unreliable, having no time to listen, where
communication was poor, and people felt they were treated as sub-human, a criminal or
infantilised. On the other hand, people felt respected, supported and secure, and their
confidence increased, where staff were perceived as reliable, attentive, trustworthy, showing
concern, interested in their progress, and where people felt they were treated as a person, a
fellow human being.
Relationships with mental health workers may not be the most important in a person’s
life –relationships with friends, family, peers are central to the well-being of all of us –but they can
be particularly powerful for good or ill. If the professionals who are supposed to be helping you do
not understand what you are going through, do not believe in your possibilities, then what hope
can there be?
The relationships that foster the hope that is so central to recovery are ones in which people:
■really listen to us;
■accept and understand our lives and experiences;
■understand how things look from where we sit;
■appreciate the devastating impact of what has happened;
■are prepared to be with us in our distress;
■value us for who and what we are;
■believe in our worth and possibilities; and
■help us get through setbacks and disappointments: learn and get stronger because of them
(see Perkins and Repper, 1996; Russinova, 1999; Repper and Perkins, 2003).
However, there will be times when it is very difficult for mental health workers –or anyone else –to
do these things: how do you value someone who hit or abused you yesterday? While it is hard, at
a personal level, to continue to respect and believe in someone who has hit you, it is sometimes
harder to process personal insults and verbal abuse.
Much aggression and “inappropriate behaviour”may be a product of the way in which people are
treated within mental health system (see Goffman, 1961; Perkins and Repper, 2017): indeed
they may be a wholly underst andable and “appropriate”way of respond ing to the
dehumanisation, infantilisation, lack of attention and care, and coercion that characterise too
DOI 10.1108/MHSI-06-2018-056 VOL. 22 NO. 3 2018, pp. 109-113, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2042-8308
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MENTALHEALTH AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
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Editorial
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