A Mental Health Service in Crisis

Way, way back when the pandemic began (& yes you can singalong if you know the reference) I predicted that the pandemic would expose the mental health epidemic which was growing in the UK

There was an inevitability to this prediction, after all, I'm no mental health expert, I'm a mere musician who happens to run a drama college, and that drama college happens to be one of the most progressive in the way that we acknowledge and support people in our industry learning how to live with mental illness.

I was mindful that so many people manage the symptoms of their mental illness and indeed trauma too, by putting their heads down and cracking on with the task in hand, keeping busy in order to ignore them.  However, in our industry, all those 'tasks' disappeared overnight. Theatres closed, rehearsals stopped, auditions stopped, the hospitality industry shut down - Muggle jobs and theatre jobs disappeared overnight removing the need to crack on with anything. We were all left in our own spaces (and for many, those spaces were quite isolated), and left in our mind space. For the people that had been quietly fighting an insidious mental health battle for years, they were suddenly confronted with a harsh reality.

I got angry when people started weaponising mental health as part of their despair with how the government were handling the pandemic. As for so many people, the pandemic simply left them emotionally vulnerable - with nothing to do to mask their feelings, they weren't ill because of the lockdown, they were ill before, but prior to lockdown life were not confronted with the real state of their minds

I've seen a lot of people acknowledge this 'new' reality, and many jumped to utilise IAPT  which I have to say appears to have run rather successfully for the numerous people that I know personally that have needed to utilise it.

However, this has been successful for people dealing with illnesses such as anxiety and depression, for those dealing with the lesser publicised illnesses such as eating disorders, bipolar, PTSD IAPT just isn't equipped to deal with those in a time-sensitive way. Those illnesses tend to need more specialist medical interventions, psychiatrists who are able to diagnose and then sort out a treatment - but again the treatments for these sorts of illnesses are not straightforward either.  You don't solve an eating disorder with a tablet (though that might be part of the treatment), complex illnesses require complex treatments.

The waiting list for these sort of illnesses appear to START at 18 months, and for children requiring a CAMHS intervention, it can be much longer. Now I mention children as the key to a successful outcome for nearly every sort of mental illness is 'early intervention'. Catch the thing at the start, treat it, and then regulate it all leading to the successful management of an illness. I mean it makes sense, doesn't it?  You break your leg - the more you use the 'damaged', untreated limb, the worse the injury gets. You're straight to the hospital, getting an X-Ray, getting that cast put on, thereby ensuring that your recovery time is as little as possible. Well, mental illnesses are no different. 

This sort of early intervention though needs a robust, joined-up, mental health service in order to operate successfully, and as much as I'm a massive fan of the NHS, a joined-up service it is not. The gatekeepers to the specialists - the GPs are STILL hit and miss when it comes to mental health.  Amazingly some of them still dismiss mental illnesses in young people, and STILL put clear MH symptoms down to 'growing pains'. 

On The MTA's Instastory series 'In Conversation', I chat with a few of my graduates who were diagnosed with illnesses whilst at college, and all of them tell the story of going to a GP when they were younger, stating the same symptoms that they presented with at college, and the GP dismissing them and effectively putting it down to teenage angst.  All got treated whilst at college, and all are now thriving. Had they not come to the college, and had they not happened across a clinician who recognised the symptoms that they were discussing, they too would have been entering the pandemic about to be confronted with their own mental illness.

The purpose of this blog though is actually to offload guilt. The guilt of knowing that somebody is very ill and highly vulnerable. Having a vague idea of what sort of treatment they should be having in order to get well and 'balance' the chemicals in their brain, but hearing day after day how that treatment is not being started because the system can not do joined-up thinking. However also hearing day after day how much worse that person is getting, and yet there is absolutely nothing that I can do other than listen.

If I had a spare cash I would, without a shadow of a doubt, get them to another psychiatrist in order for them to receive the treatment that has been suggested to them - but psychiatrist fees range from £350 right up to nearly £1000 for a consultation and then you're potentially adding on numerous tests on top of that. One person that I know has already forked out hundreds for the initial diagnosis, but now they're back on the NHS waiting list waiting for a doctor to approve their treatment, and because of the complexity of the diagnosis. . . you guessed it. . . the GP can't prescribe the necessary treatment, it has to be approved by a psychiatrist!

Where the pandemic really hasn't helped is this idea that you can't go to an appointment or present at a hospital at the moment with a plus one. You have to go to all appointments on your own. Well if you're mentally ill, the chances are quite strong that you'll be unable to really talk about your maladaptive coping strategies, as you'll see them all as perfectly 'normal'. Whereas if somebody goes with you, they can highlight the difficulties. eg if you're awaiting an appointment to get diagnosed with an eating disorder, there's a strong chance that you'll not want that diagnosis, as you're happy lying to yourself saying that your current relationship to food is just fine. However, your loved ones are far more likely to recognise that your habits are not fine, and indeed you're effectively self-harming with your relationship to and around food. They will be able to name that in the room.

The solution to this requires the government to properly fund the NHS, a thing that we've seen time after time they refuse to do. Throw some money at the early intervention stage and you won't need to spend so much in the continuing care stage.  Throw money at the educators to ensure that they're able to spot the early signs of mental illnesses. Ensure that GPs are trained to acknowledge that mental health is every bit as important as physical health, and should not be dismissed in young people.

Until that glorious day comes then we also need to really train up effective mental health crisis teams, as I've yet to speak to anyone that's had a good experience with one. You need your top people on that team, not the work experience guys just filling in because you're short-staffed! I mean - I know that they're not really 'work-experience' guys, but honestly judging by some of the people that I've met whilst supporting people in crisis you'd agree with my description.

So as you're shouting about the ever growing suicide rates in the UK in a bid to weaponize the pandemic, let's get some other facts out there tool Facts like the rates have been growing year on year for at least a decade, facts like early intervention could prevent a whole load of those people becoming statistics, facts like better education around mental health would allow people to access help earlier, and facts like even when people are looking for help, that help comes complete with a waiting list, the timeframe for which for many, might be too long to even contemplate.

There IS a mental health crisis in the UK, but the mental health services are also in crisis, thanks to years of underfunding by successive governments. Weaponise that and try to make a difference.. 

Carefully Taught

As we attempt to navigate the latest path out of the pandemic some of the residual anger and resentment that we saw build up during the lockdown has stayed with us. Lockdown forced everyone to become reflective. World events shone a spotlight on systemic inequalities, and that slow burn anger suddenly ignited, sending people out onto the streets demanding change.

Of course in reality that call for change had been ever present, but a series of events amplified the voices to a level that they just couldn't be ignored. From BLM, to safety for women right through to 'freedom marches' there was a protest for everyone to get behind, whatever your own political beliefs.

The ripples of all those protests have been found in schools and colleges across the UK (and no doubt world). Students empowered by movements and causes that they can get behind have all vowed to make us a better, more equal society. For those of us that can easily remember the 80s it's quite a throwback. I was training during the student occupations in the late 80s, hell I even took part in one, we thought and indeed had to believe that we could create the change that was so desperately needed in the world.  I was raised by an ardent trade unionist who taught me to always stand up for what was right and to fight for injustice. In other words I'm all about radical change, but now a few decades on, I realise that meaningful change takes time, and we owe it to our 'cause' to have the conversations that will lead to systemic changes, not just quick fixes.

In our industry various institutions and organisations have been called out for historical wrong doings. Drama colleges in particular have been called out for poor behaviour and inequality.  So many intention statements have been issued around what changes certain institutions are going to undertake in order to wake up to this new order.

I think that a sad by-product of these important discussions though are the amount of teachers no longer wanting to work within the drama college framework. I've spoken to so many people recently that are literally too scared to teach as they feel that they're now unable to get things wrong.

Now before you jump on this blog and shout that it's a good thing that 'those' teachers want to leave, and that people who can't evolve and change should be kicked out, yadda yadda . . . hear me out, as I don't actually think that it's the 'problematic' teachers that are wanting to leave. After all, those sort of teachers are never reflective on their own practice, and will simply dig a trench of their own belief system and hide in it for a while until it's safe to come out. "Those" teachers will find other jobs in other sympathetic organisations that won't require them to even give 'lip service' to the systemic changes that are needed.

No I believe that we're losing the teachers that are desperate to get it right . . . all because the sudden hunger for change does not give them the right to get it wrong. One dumb comment, one thought provoking question can result in a social media backlash, or an official complaint needing weeks of investigation in order to follow protocol. Their confidence is being eroded, and a teacher consumed with self doubt is never a good one.

Whatever happened to nuanced discussions, discourse, learning from mistakes?

Again before you jump on this there are clearly some things that are just 'wrong' eg wilful mistakes that could and indeed should lead to a legal prosecution. However that's in a different league to a teacher just having a bad day and saying an unthinking sentence in the spur of a moment. As educators we should not be expected to get everything 'right' straight away. Like our students we have to learn how to exist in this brave new world too.

The teachers that I've spoken to feel like they've lost that freedom to get it wrong. One wrong word, one stupidly phrased sentence leads to them being called out as an 'ist'. However it's important to remember that teachers are fallible humans too. The thoughtless sentence that's hurt a student can't be assumed to have been said with a premeditated intent to hurt or damage. There's so much more to the issue than that moment. A context, a nuance, an understanding. . . a conversation.

Teachers are expected to take into account the wellbeing of their students, to acknowledge and make allowances for a 'bad day', to attempt to stay curious about why somebody reacted in such a way, as opposed to writing off that person for their actions in a single moment. We hold in high regard the ability for somebody to learn from their mistakes, we encourage 'daring to fail' as a mantra for learning. Yet teachers are now expected to just get it right straight away. 

We are all living through the pandemic, as angry and frustrated as students are for the slowness of change, teachers are also burnt out and spent, as they too attempt to navigate the change that is so sorely needed. However I believe that we also have to give teachers the right to get it wrong. Once again for clarity I'm not talking about things that are illegal, I'm talking about regular things where they just get it wrong or handle things badly.

Teachers should be afforded the same luxury of learning from their mistakes, being held accountable and also making right where necessary.

With the recent cases of school teachers being trialed by social media we have to be wary of these things as it's important to remember that one person's account is not necessarily 'the truth'. It is 'their truth', but we don't know what else was going on for them when they had those experiences. There is always another truth or another side to an event, and it is those two things that come together to create 'the truth'.

I spoke about this before having seen a friend be put through hell and back when somebody chose to lie about them on social media. As the person on the receiving end of the lie you have no recourse to defend yourself, as seemingly the first account of a story that people read is now considered to be the gospel truth,  after all, who would knowingly lie about 'such a thing'? Yet the thing is. . . people do lie.

I've had this experience countless times myself. Even quite recently on one social media platform somebody commented under one of our videos that they'd been to the college and had been physically beaten up by a member of the faculty during the audition!!! A ludicrous statement on so many levels, the person making the claim had never stepped foot in the college and other than this troll post had had nothing to do with us at all - but people were prepared to believe them, after all . . . why would they be lying?  I mean this is an extreme example and I called the person out on it, but you get my drift. Social media is as dangerous as it is brilliant. There was another case recently where somebody posted a wholly inaccurate account of a situation that they had been involved with, now for sure that could have been their experience of the events, but by missing out huge chunks of really important and vital information, their sense of injustice read true, however those missing chunks actually painted a very different picture. Again though - social media is not the place to try to defend actions. There's just not the space.  In an ideal world you'd call out these things, sue for defamation and have your day in court and a sense of justice, however the reality of that is that you have to be very rich to fight even the most basic of defamation cases. So you're forced to just leave it out there and hope that nothing comes of it. In the meantime, as in the case of my friend though, these wild accusations can lead innocent people down a dark path of despair. A huge price to pay for literally doing nothing wrong.

So what's the answer, as I really worry that we're going to lose a lot of brilliant teachers who really care about their students/pupils, and in truth I don't know. I guess we all have to keep striving to create workplaces where difficult discussions can take place, without fear of retribution when heavily edited accounts are posted online. Students need to be heard, but equally teachers need to feel confident with their voices too.  Is it more staff training? Is it more discussions in town hall type meetings within organisations?  We're well past the age of 'the teacher is always right', but equally we shouldn't be in the age of 'the student is always right'. I guess that it's mutual respect, constant conversations and an openness to change, and that change can sometimes come from getting it wrong, and both students and staff have to be supported and indeed granted the right to 'learn from their mistakes'.

Tis a brave new world, and one that we're all striving to belong to. It just takes time eh?

Mental Health and resilience

 I've read several conflicting articles over the past couple of weeks about how much better our industry is coping with mental health since the pandemic. Some claim that we're really getting on top of it all now with lots of additional help being put in place, others claim that we're still not doing enough, and we're about to witness a massive era of crash and burn.

Now as the person that started campaigning for better education around mental health in drama training some 7 years ago now, and as someone that was instrumental in launching the #time4change mental health charter some 5 years ago I'm finding the conversations really difficult - and here's why. We're focused on the symptoms, not the cause. We're working off the assumption that the industry is making people ill, whereas it seems to me that with 1 in 3 in the arts susceptible to mental illness, shouldn't we be moving a few steps backwards and try to deal with the fact that people who might already be experiencing symptoms of mental illnesses are entering our industry. For sure our industry makes it worse, but for lots of reasons, our industry attracts a certain demographic.

What am I basing this brazen statement on - 12 years of running a drama college with a clinician heading up my pastoral care team. I am truly gobsmacked at how many of my students over the years were attempting to deal with obvious mental illness symptoms and yet nobody had diagnosed them. Instead, there are countless stories of GPs, teachers, and even parents normalising their symptoms, putting it down to teenage angst etc when all the time they just needed treatment. I've witnessed first-hand the life-changing effect of treatments like CBT, talking therapy and sometimes where indicated, a chemical intervention. 

The trouble with the new culture of declaring your mental health is that we're failing to build resilience and we're failing to address the real issue. We all have crap days, and we all have days where we have to push through 'a mood' but for some, this is indicative of an illness. The answer isn't necessarily to have a day off though. For example, if our students hit a crisis at college we support them to come in as much a possible. Physical exercise is one of the best endorphin hits around and my lot dance for 3.5 hours every morning.  For sure we can give them moments outside of the space to breathe, but then it's back into the studio as soon as possible. Distraction is also really useful.

Now clearly there can't and shouldn't be blanket rules, this is not a black and white issue. For the student suddenly diagnosed with bipolar who is in a depressive episode, and who is attempting to get the right treatment, college is not the right environment for them, you can't 'push through' that. So it's about having a clinician on hand to advise us how best to help.

Anxiety is through the roof at the moment for all of us, but for some people, they've been living with anxiety their entire lives, so this is just the icing on a really big cake. Yet not many people seem to realise that anxiety is a treatable condition. So why learn to live with the symptoms when you could be living your life symptom-free? 

Some of these symptoms are incredibly nuanced, and would not be picked up by the much-lauded mental health first aiders, just like an underlying condition would not be picked up by a St John's first aider.  Here's the rub though there is no longer a shame about having a bad mental health day, but there's still a shame in actually having a mental illness.

Until we address the taboo that some people were literally born with a genetic loading stacking the odds against them from the off (just like we're genetically loaded to have other illnesses) then this is always going to be an unsatisfactory conversation.

The discussion around wellbeing has (I'll say it again) hijacked the much-needed conversation around mental illness. As one of my students once said, if eating vegetables, taking nature hikes and yoga could have cured their depression then they shouldn't have hit a major crisis. For them, the only solution was a medical intervention, their clinical depression needed a chemical reaction to rebalance them. No amount of broccoli, sea air and downward dog could replicate what their brain actually needed.

Early intervention is key, primary schools are slowly edging towards a whole school approach to mental health, in the interim though colleges should be the final safety net to catch people. 

They Saved The MTA

19th July 7pm announced publicly that we were closing The MTA in September 2021. This was not a ploy, it was a heartbreaking reality.

29th July midday announced that somehow we had been 'saved'. In just 10 days the darkest day of The MTA turned into the brightest day. We're under no illusions that we're saved for good - but we are safe long enough to allow the class of 2022 to graduate, and for the past 3 to 4 months that's all we were trying to do. We have plans and supporters in place to work with us to secure a better future for the college, but we'll be taking it one step at a time. Of course the intention is to keep going - but we set out to do one thing first.

In the last 10 days, though we've seen instalives packed with MT royalty supporting the #savetheMTA campaign, we've seen a Go Fund Me campaign raised at the last look over £16k, we've had offers of support both financial and in kind. I've spoken more to Chairman Jon Harris than I have to my wife, as we worked our way through the various obstacles and aids that were thrown at us.

I've been reminded time and time again that my poor self-esteem really can't handle compliments. I've been taken on countless trips down Memory Lane, with past students and staff, lots of those trips were just sheer laughter, a couple of sheer horror but quite a few of them were devastatingly humbling.

I've been reminded (as if I needed it actually) that I have an amazing group of friends that really 'get me', who know when to back off, and exactly when to parachute in with words of wisdom. My family are my heroes.

I spent half the week emailing people telling them that things had been canceled, and terminating contracts, whilst the latter part of the week emailing them back to say that things were all back on.

To say that I'm reeling is an understatement. However, most of all I feel a huge sense of relief. Carrying the stress of the past year has taken a tremendous toll on me. That old work/life balance definitely needs adjusting, but suddenly the college once again has a sense of possibility and hope about it, as opposed to a sense of inevitability. 

Over the past year, the pandemic had almost forced the wider MTA community apart. Not so fulfilling to pop into a zoom room as it is to pop into a Green Room. Whilst every so often we'd all come together for some online event or another it did feel like it had drifted. However, once the closure announcement was made those ambassadors were just phenomenal. I had spent the best part of the year sad for my 1st years because they had no sense of the greater MTA community when suddenly they all parachuted down to help out of nowhere.

I've kept saying this but The MTA is not the only independent drama college focussing on vocational training. There's a few of us about, and we're all being sold out by the industry's gatekeepers and that really needs to change. We're going to keep doing our thing because we know that it works, and from the outpouring of support we've had over the last 10 days it seems obvious that quite a few people agree with us. We've consciously not issued press releases - predominantly because I loathe how in recent years The Stage has noticeably changed direction from the 'we'll support everyone' stance that we used to know and love into the 'we'll only talk about the Federation of Drama Schools' as if there's nothing else out there. Well let's just call it shall we - as a lot of those colleges are currently undertaking internal investigations on really serious allegations, but The Stage still reveres the ground that they walk on.  The Stage (and Equity) should be campaigning to regulate the UK training industry. Instead, everybody stays quiet.

They are our industry newspaper and have done next to nothing to highlight and campaign about the lack of provision in vocational training, just like Equity have done nothing. Too many 'old boys' looking after the 'old boys' for my liking. Plus now that they've added these ridiculous clickbait headlines to social media posts knowing full well that the articles are behind a paywall . . . well I'm done with pretending that that's OK.  We've called it out a few times over the closure, and it's been interesting to see others call it out too. Well, we're done with being quiet with this stuff moving forward. Things really do need to change.

That said, and rant over, for now, I'm going to take some time to finish off this academic year, regroup, reset then move forward. The path ahead though doesn't feel as lonely as usual. 

Expect the Unexpected

 Every year when a new intake joins the college we ask our graduates and 2nd years if they have any advice for the newbies. Without fail one person will always say that to 'survive' #theMTAway they need to expect the unexpected. Now to qualify that really quickly - what they're referring to is our penchant of springing surprise auditions on them all the time. We do it to train our students not to be afraid of auditions, to almost see them as a game. Successful or not, just to have taken part means that it was an audition 'banked'. None of us ever know when the payout of that deposit will be, but if you did your prep, it will eventually pay you back.

Well, this week's event has made me really reflect on that phrase. Monday was truly horrific. Since the Board voted not to run next year late on Friday evening, it's fair to say that my weekend was . . . difficult. I still had a show left to finish writing, and it's REALLY hard trying to write a comedy when you're living in your own private hell. Just to make 2021 really perfect, just a matter of days earlier I had also been home to Wales to attend the funeral of a really close relative. It had been one of those tragic diagnosed one week died 2 weeks later sort of scenarios. With my wife looking after the children I ended up locking myself away in the office for the weekend writing, grieving and stunned actually. 

In a bid to support our students when we broke the news I was flagged by Jon Harris, the Chair of our Board, Sam Hull, a Trustee but also one of our original cohort (so she'd been there on the day that the college opened), plus faculty members Josh Mathieson (Head of Voice/VP), Giles Taylor (Deputy Head of Acting) and Tilly Vosburgh (Head of Acting who had literally ubered across to us after finishing a morning shoot).

The next hour was a blur really, emails scheduled to go out to incoming students, staff, supporters, 2 year groups to tell, a social media live in a private group to tell our graduates. Here's what I do remember though - the first years whilst devastated were instantly galvanised into a group of action, even though the situation was desperate we still managed to find things to laugh about (a very important MTA trait). The irony that they had literally just finished a MT class looking at rep only to discover that the song of the day had been "Tell Me It's Not True"? I mean WTAF? 

The 2nd years were equally stunned, but recognised instantly that they were in many way unaffected by the decision (other than the lack of free dance classes moving forward), so immediately after we finished explaining the situation to them - their response? They asked to go across to the other studio to support their friends in the first year. It was as beautiful as it was devastatingly painful to watch.

Then this is when it all changed - as I had made the decision to personally tell our graduates (college for life and all that, so we have regular contact with them, and this was far too important to just send an email). I nipped into their private FB group to go live and tell them (I should add that the only other time that I've ever done that actually was when it was announced that the UK was closing down for a global pandemic, and we went live in all our groups to reassure them and tell them that we were around to support them).  As with our students, we explained our financial position in detail as we're always transparent with our students, yet even when I made it clear that we were looking to find stupid money very quickly, they were instantly galvanised to try and help.

By that evening a group calling themselves "The MTA Community" has started a Go Fund Me, we had already been contacted about the potential of some larger donations, and by the time the news went public at 7pm it felt like this kamikaze juggernaut that I'd been trying to steer for the last few months had already been taken away from me, with a whole group of people suddenly attempting to steer it instead. 

It was a conscious decision to put out our statement on our own terms via our social media channels, as for quite some time now it's been evident that our industry press has a clear bias supporting the Federation of Drama Schools, and their clickbait social media headlines invariably belie the story of the articles held behind a paywall. We had nothing to hide and A LOT to say, and we wanted the full story out there.  Whilst we felt that it was too late for us, we know that we're not the only college struggling with policy decisions designed to push out true vocational training.

Never in a million years did I think that our post would have the reaction that it did. We felt that we were such an insignificant cog in this beast of an industry that we would be gifted the dignity to slide away quietly. I was aware that we had facilitated change in the training industry, especially around all the mental health stuff, but even that felt like it had been sidelined recently having heard the absolute horror stories that were spilling out in the media. Organisations that had signed up to the #time4change mental health charter had clearly done nothing more than offered lip service to it given what else was alleged to have been going on in these colleges.

How wrong we were.  As people that work with me know I'm fastidious about responding to messages instantly, invoices are literally paid on receipt as I just like to keep on top of my work. However, there was no way that I could keep on top of this. Once I've finished this I've got some serious catching up to do.

We still don't know what's going to happen, we still haven't secured all the funding that we need, however, we have now said that IF we did reach our £250K goal which would enable us to end the course properly for our current first years, we would also run one more first-year group, only this time with no guarantee of a 2nd year, and as the £250K is essentially paying for "ghost seats" for the students that we failed to attract, we committed to filling those seats with disadvantaged students who would never usually be able to afford a vocational college. We'll hold auditions for a diverse group of students who would like to train #theMTAway for a year. They'd get to do 3 shows with us if nothing else. 

My only unfulfilled dream around The MTA was to find a way to fund 50% of our places with 50% funding already in place. Maybe, just maybe our final year would finally allow me to reach that goal. A bittersweet irony, but a hugely gratifying one at that.

The story goes on. . . . 

Here's a link to the Go Fund Me page: https://uk.gofundme.com/f/save-the-mta