Tag: experience

Julia Buckley – Heal Me

The NHS has a huge problem with chronic pain. Or rather, some people with traumatic pain have a huge problem with the NHS, which in turn can lead to troublesome chronic pain. And that in turn can destroy lives, literally in the case of suicides, but for many others in terms of the appalling distress and the interruption to normal business.

Julia Buckley’s engaging, warm-hearted, but also angry, book is in part an investigation of ways to treat her pain, but it is also an exploration of her body, and the reasons why she developed chronic pain. It is a … Read more...

Ouch – Disability talk

The BBC’s podcast covering all things related to ‘disability’ runs to over 200 episodes since 2007.

There are programmes covering athletes at the Paralympics and comedians with a disability, but there are also programmes on more day-to-day issues like the difficulties of finding shoes to fit, and difficulties with wheelchairs.

Particular programmes deal with specific conditions or experiences, like a cycling injury that leaves Hannah without any English language.

The page for hunting through previous episodes is here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02r6yqw/episodes/downloads

 … Read more...

How do you perceive the world?

Everyone experiences reality in a slightly different way – but unless we describe those experiences in great detail, the differences between them go undetected. Biologist Mia Tomova has described in detail how her visual imagination seems lacking compared to that of others, a condition that is called aphantasia. She is unable to construct images of things in her mind’s eye. It is hard to know what other people see in their mind’s eye, just as it is hard to know if you see the same blues as I see when we look at the sky. Mia is probably correct … Read more...

The Boy with the Incredible Brain – Daniel Tammet

What is autism and so-called ‘autistic spectrum disorder’? It is a question that is difficult to ask of many people with autism because of their acute linguistic and communication difficulties. On the other hand, will we get a useful answer by asking atypical individuals with ‘high functioning autism’ like Daniel Tammet, John Elder Robison and Temple Grandin, who are not only independent but able to write books and communicate about their perspective? Are their views representative of this group in society?

Daniel Tammet is on many measures an exceptional individual. He is a savant with exceptional numerical and memory skills. … Read more...

Notes on Blindness

How do you communicate to a seeing audience the experience of losing sight using the medium of video? Notes on Blindness makes a fantastic and memorable attempt at the impossible. John Hull went blind after a series of eye operations, finally losing his sight at the age of 45. He recorded his comments on what adult-onset blindness is like between 1983 and 1986, three years after the last eye operation in 1980. Actors perform brilliantly to a sound track comprising extracts from John Hull’s original tapes and extracts from some more recent recordings by him and his wife. (John Hull … Read more...

Daniel Tammet – Born on a Blue Day

What is autism and so-called ‘autistic spectrum disorder’? It is a question that is difficult to ask of many people with autism because of their acute linguistic and communication difficulties. On the other hand, will we get a useful answer by asking atypical individuals with ‘high functioning autism’ like Daniel Tammet, John Elder Robison and Temple Grandin, who are not only independent but able to write books and communicate about their perspective? Are their views representative of this group in society?

Daniel Tammet is on many measures an exceptional individual. He is a savant with exceptional numerical and memory skills. … Read more...

William Styron – Darkness Visible

This slim text, only 84 pages in the paperback Picador edition, is an eloquent description by an American novelist of his experience of depression in 1985-6, and his subsequent gradual emergence from the darkness. The account of the ‘storm’ that brought William Styron into an acute psychiatric ward in December 1985 was first published in 1989, first as a lecture and then as an article in Vanity Fair. In part he seems to be responding to recent public reactions to suicides, among others that of Primo Levi, novelist and survivor of Auschwitz, in 1987. As someone who got to … Read more...

Stephen Fry – The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive

This documentary is part-confessional, and part-documentary, including filming of Stephen Fry at places associated with critical moments of his life – his school, the theatre where he had his breakdown, the garage where he attempted to commit suicide, a recreation of his flight overseas afterwards, and the story of his treatment. In between these filmed confessionals there are important sections about the nature of manic depression and interviews with researchers at Cardiff and Aberdeen Universities, and visits to an acute psychiatric unit and interviews with other people with bipolar ‘disorder’.

There is a very important discussion on the merits and … Read more...

Gwyneth Lewis – Sunbathing In The Rain

Gwyneth Lewis’ book about her experience of depression is in sharp contrast to those of William Styron or Stuart Sutherland. It is longer than both of the others but in smaller bite-sized chunks of reminiscence or description, or suggested rules for the depressed, or guidelines for carers, all interspersed with bizarre newspaper stories, and quotations from authors ranging from Kirkegaard to Lewis Carroll. Running through it all is a positive thought that may not be shared by all who have experienced depression. This thought is that her depression came out of an internal contradiction within her original way of life, … Read more...

Tony Judt – The Memory Chalet

In his essay ‘Night’, historian Tony Judt gave his personal take on one particular aspect of Motor Neuron Disease (or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis since he was living in the United States at the time). At the stage of writing this essay Judt was almost completely paralysed, but with no swallowing or jaw symptoms, and therefore able to dictate his thoughts. (Films of him in his last year – see the foot of this page – show that despite his nasal respiratory support he struggled to make a lot of sound when he spoke.)

The essay concerns the loneliness and isolation … Read more...