Drew Payne

I first came across Wicked when I read the novel, in the early 2000s. I enjoyed the book’s story and themes, questioning whether are people born evil, made evil or just painted as evil. Isn’t it so easy just to have a villain? We saw the original London West End production of the musical, back in 2006. And last month we saw the first film, in the two film version of it. I enjoyed the film as much as the book and musical, though they are all different, and found myself swept along with the story, but I wasn’t the only one. During a press junket with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, journalist Tracy E Gilchrist asked this question: “I’ve seen this week people are taking the lyrics of ‘Defying Gravity’ and really holding space with that and feeling power in that”. This produced a very emotional response in Erivo and Grande. “That’s really powerful,” said Cynthia Erivo, who played the lead role, Elphaba, in the film. “That’s what I wanted.” Ariana Grande gripped her co-star’s hand as she spoke. Gilchrist later said, for her, “holding space” was “being physically, emotionally and mentally present with someone or something.” (2) This has all gone onto to be a meme on social media. Defying Gravity is a very powerful song. It’s sung by Elphaba, the Green Witch of the West, at the end of act one of the musical, and the end of the film, Wicked Part One. Elphaba is fighting back against ignorance and intolerance. She literally flies above it all. It says, no matter how much you try to push me down, I’ll raise above it. It is a great end of act one/part one song and Cynthia Erivo performs it perfectly. But for me, my “holding space” moment happened earlier in the film, when Elphaba sang “I’m Not That Girl,” performed heartbreakingly well by Cynthia Erivo. This song comes after the handsome but rather shallow Prince Fiyero (Played with wonderful style by Jonathan Bailey) aids Elphaba in an act of rebellion. As they part ways, Elphaba realises she’s in love with Fiyero, but he loves Glinda (the perfectly blonde Ariana Grande). “I’m Not That Girl” is a painful song of unrequited love, Elphaba knows she isn’t the “girl” for Fiyero, and never will be, but she still loves him. Sitting in the cinema, hearing Cynthia Erivo singing that song, and I was swept back to being sixteen again. I was hopelessly, secretly and stupidly in love with a straight man who couldn’t see what was happening. To him, I was just a friend. I would never be his “girl” and I left with emotions I had no experience how to cope with. Back then I saw no way out of it. It’s over forty years ago that I was sixteen, I’ve been with my husband for twenty-six years, yet that song drew me right back to that horrible and painful time of my life. That is the power of a well written song, capturing a specific emotion. As I sat there, in the cinema, watching Cynthia Erivo’s singing of “I’m Not That Girl,” I was taken right back to being sixteen, to those hopeless emotions. It caught me off guard, I hadn’t expected those emotions and for a moment I remembered that pain. It was a surprise to have my “holding space” moment, watching Wicked. I’d seen the stage musical, in which I saw “I’m Not That Girl” performed by Idina Menzel. But in the cinema, with the framing and close-ups of Cynthia Erivo’s singing, it heightened the emotions. It certainly dragged up those memories for me. But that is the power of great songs, to draw us into the emotions and story of a song. Don’t we all have one song or another that is special for us, a song that will take us back to a certain time, a song that can remind us of something good or bad that happened to us, a song that always reminds us of a certain person. This is the power of combining the right music and lyrics, to invoke emotions and/or memories in others. It’s a skill I don’t have. I wish I could write songs, and I have tried in the past, but they were really awful. So instead I’ll carry on writing fiction about screwed-up people and writing essays from my life. If I can create a “holding space” for someone with my writing, that would be worth it all. Drew

Oh hell, I remember things like this. Some overworked social worker, with twenty-plus more clients on their caseload than is safe, didn't have the time to help a mental health patient, so gave them the money they were entitled to and just left them to furnish their own, new home. Many of those people had never budgeted in their life, suddenly are given a large amount of money and they spend it on the things they have dreamed of owning. When this happened, the tabloids blamed the individual social worker, not the crap system they were working in. Supporting people with mental health problems, especially when they move out of hospital, takes time and resources, but the resources aren't there for them, especially if they don't have any family. I saw it time and again and it was so frustrating.

Wow, what amazing experience your family has had. Any chance you could get them to write a book? I'm a retired Registered Nurse, I had to take ill health retirement at the beginning of the year. I still miss my job. I worked as a District Nurse, for nearly the last fifteen years of my career. I looked after a lot of patients who had physical and mental health problems. Our District Nurse team was understaffed but the Community Psychiatric Nurse team, we worked with, was chronically understaffed. In my early twenties, I worked as a Resettlement Worker, helping people move out of a long-stay psychiatric hospital and back into the community. I really believe that living in the community is the best place rather than being dumped away in some long-stay psychiatric hospital, but it is unbelievably underfunded. It was seen as the "cheap alternative" and it bloody isn't. Those people need help and resources too, but mental health services have been the forgotten service, for funding, for far too long. It all makes me so sad and angry. In the 2000s, I worked as a Training & Audit Nurse in East London and regularly worked in a Juvenile Secure Hospital. I based Nuron Cross on that hospital. At the same time, my husband was the Infection Control Nurse covering Broadmoor. I wish I could tell some of his stories but confidentiality and all that.

Thank you. I've lived with Liam for two years and he is such a damaged soul. He didn't have the best start in life, with his nightmare of a mother, and then he made one huge wrong decision. One of the things I wanted to write about here is how people can do well in hospital (especially mental health hospitals) but when they are discharged there just isn't the support out there in the community. I saw that so many times professionally. Liam doesn't even have the support of a family.

I wanted to show how poorly supported Liam is, once he has been discharged from the hospital. In Nurton Cross, there were people around him and he had plenty of support. Here, on the outside, there is no one and his old insecurities have returned. Also, the awful Donna reminded him that people still dislike him. But I do know how this story will end.

He's stuck there, on his own, in a rundown B&B hotel. There is no one to talk to, to help him throw his thoughts, so he's going to go to a sad place. It's a terrible thing to say but his life at Nurton Cross was better.

Liam stood in front of his pale blue cotton shirt hanging off the hook on the wall of his room in the B&B hotel. He reached up and ran his hand down one of its sleeves: the cotton was still soft and smooth under his fingers. He was nearly sixteen when he bought it, his only second afternoon out of Nurton Cross. On Day Release. Aiden had egged him to buy it and… It still fitted him and would be ideal for his interviews the next day. He hadn’t worn it since he’d left Nurton Cross - it was too

In October, the British government announced plans to help people with mental health problems to get back into work. This would see “employment advisers” visiting people in hospital, who have been admitted with mental health problems, and giving them CV and interview advice. It was piloted at hospitals in Leicester and at the Maudsley Hospital in Camberwell, London, with “dramatic results”, though the results haven’t been published yet. This isn’t a hundred percent altruistic, it is also an attempt to reduce the disability benefits bill, which is projected to increase by a third in the next four to five years, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. A jump to £63bn by 2028-29, from £48bn for 2023-24. "There is clear evidence we are really struggling with health problems," said Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall. She wants employers to “think different” about employees with mental health problems, offering flexibility to support and retain people. Now this scheme is not perfect. Why are they only offering this advice and support to people in hospital, why not to people in the community? Why aren’t they working with employers to offer people, with long term mental health problems, work experience to gain skills that make them attractive to employers? And there are so many other things too. But this is a start at supporting people and is better than nothing, which is what the previous government offered, they just wanted people to repeatedly prove how ill they were. Then, the other week, one of my relatives posted a link to this story, on Facebook, with the caption: “What absolute numpty thought this through? They get a job coach visit, why don’t they just say “get over it” because that always works doesn’t it?” Underneath people had added to the following comments: “I actually cringed watching this report.” “Who would employ someone who could be ill numerous days a month? How can a business run if you don't know how many staff are going to be there?” An ‘Oh how stupid’ emoji. “This is what you get when you vote Labour in.” To which my relative replied, “Luckily, I didn’t.” I wanted to scream at the post, “How can you say that? How can you be so prejudiced?” But employment is so important to how we identify ourselves, to our self-worth. How often do we get asked “And what do you do?” How much of our identity is made up from our job/profession? Mark Tausig argued that work is the central activity whereby most adults define their identity. I retired recently and I find it is strange to no longer belong to a profession, which had been so important in my life. Robert Drake and Michael Wallach argue that unemployment worsens mental health, while employment can improve it. They said that being employed gives us self-reliance, we are valued by others, we gain the respect of others, we have an income and employment helps us to gain community integration. We can see this in our own lives. But in the UK only 15% of people with serious mental health problems are employed. That is an extremely large number of people who haven’t got the security and value of having a job. Why aren’t we concerned about this? The evidence shows the benefit of employment. Hoare & Machin, in their study, found that participants who found employment, had greater social contact, more structured time and therefore saw significant improvements in their mental health. Another study found that the work environment improved people’s mental health. That those with mental health problems saw an improvement in their symptoms, plus improvements in their leisure and finances from being employed. And another study found that if people with mental health problems are able to find work, then it reduces the burden on society as a whole. Those people being able to support themselves, partially or fully. Saying all this, we can’t just give someone with mental health problems a job, then expect them to get on with it and their health get better. People will need support. Secker & Membrey identify that specific adjustments maybe required, such as flexible working hours, flexible work schedules and job tasks, especially in relation to the medication a person is taking, allowing the person to regain their stamina and confidence. Modini & Joyce (6) found that the literature, on mental health in the workplace, focused on the negative impacts of work on mental health. But they also found that the evidence is that work can help improve a person’s mental health. Evans & Repper argue, and rightly, that mental health services and staff should also be involved in supporting people back into work, it should be a vital role because of the benefits work brings to people and communities. Drake & Wallach (2) make the same argument, that part of treatment should emphasise the importance of work and support people into employment. But supporting people will bare positive fruits. Castle, Crosse, and Harvey conducted a study were they provided only 20 hours of support to people in gaining employment, but their study found that 21% of those people found jobs and 43% went onto volunteering or studying. How much more could be achieved if those people had an employment coach, even for one day a week? My own experience bears this out, too. In my early twenties, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I suffered from severe depression. It was so bad that I was hospitalised with it, twice, and I spent a long time taking medication for it. This was a very difficult time for me. I couldn’t tell many people I was ill, the stigma of mental illness was very high, and one of the few people I trusted to tell didn’t “believe” I was ill. I was also studying for my nursing qualification at the same time. This actually helped my mental health. I had the structure of my work placements, having to be there at a certain time. Also my studies gave me structure too, having to be at lectures at certain times, having to work on assignments with specific deadlines. My mental health was poor but that structure kept me together and kept me functioning. The only person I told at college was my personal tutor, because I was afraid if others knew I would be kicked off my course, and she supported me and kept quiet about my illness. When I qualified, I found it difficult to find my first job. As soon as prospective employers found out I had depression, they withdrew their job offers. The Occupational Health Department of the hospital I trained at told me that if they had known I had depression they would have had my training stopped. They said I was “unfit” to work as a nurse. I am so glad my personal tutor protected me from this. But all this rejection took a toll on me, my mental health deteriorated. I was being denied employment through no fault of my own. I had already proved I could safely work while having depression. It was so hopeless. I eventually found a job but I had to lie on my application. I didn’t tick the section that asked if I’d ever had any mental illness. During this awful time, I would have loved to have access to an employment adviser who could have helped me through this. Instead I navigated it all on my own. So why are we only just now looking at supporting people back into work, and in such a limited way? Since 2010, we have had the Equality Act, which makes it unlawful to discriminate against people with protected characteristics, including disability, and that includes mental health problems. But laws don’t change attitudes, not straight away. Frijters, Johnston & Shields found that having a mental health problem reduces your chance of getting employment by 30%. I had hoped that attitudes to mental illness had changed since I had depression. It seems now that ever z list celebrity is having their “struggles” with mental health problems. But my relative’s post on Facebook has made me question this. Do people still believe that mental illness is just someone faking it, using it as a way to avoid working? That a mental health problem automatically makes you unemployable? In 2011, David Cameron’s government coined the political slogan, “strivers v shirkers”. This labelled people in work as “strivers” and those receiving benefits as “shirkers”. This simplistic ignorance appalled me back then, but have we come no further? Now I doubt we have. Drew

He's starting to head towards his release but this is all new to him and strange environments change cause anxiety. He still needs the support of his nurses.

He's sixteen now. He's been at Nurton Cross for four years, and all that care is paying off. Plus, he finally has someone in his life who cares about him. Though there are strangers who just stare at you in public.

Mark was sitting at the table in the Visitors Room waiting for him as he always did. But Mark looked different, not very different, but enough to be noticeable. Mark’s hair was longer - it now reached down to his collar and, being longer, it seemed to be pulling it down, making the curls look more opener and shaggy. Mark’s face was different too - his chin and the bottom part of his cheeks were covered in very short but dark stubble, as if he’d missed a day or two shaving. He was dressed in a ba

Thank you. This is why I wrote this. A year ago, I saw a documentary about Ireland and the only mentions of Drew were about his death, and they called him Andrew and not Drew. I wrote this so something different would show up, on a Google about him or Ireland. Unfortunately, I just did not know him well enough. He was a friend-of-a-friend. I wish I had known him better, I wish I could write more about him and the man he was. Maybe, someone who knew him better will do that.

Thank you.

I want those Evangelical Christians, who shout hate at LGBTQ events, to be treated the same by the police as other protestors. They are so often given such an easy pass. At this year's Pride, the police had created a special area where they could shout their hate from. I don't like Just Stop Oil, they're self-indulgent and self-righteous middle-class people, who think they are "doing their part" in fighting climate change. Their "protests" aren't directed at oil firms and the politicians supporting them, they don't glue themselves to the doors of oil company HQs. Instead they disrupt ordinary people's lives by blocking roads and such. They need to read the Act-Up handbook of civil disobedience, you don't piss off the public. I agree with them being prosecuted but the sentences handed down to them are unjustly extreme. They were sentenced to four to five years in prison, the same sentence as for violent disorder, and they are not the same. Their protests certainly got out of hand but they were poorly policed and allowed to do so. No disrespect to your husband, but the London Met Police are crap and just keep failing. I support the right to protest against injustice but not to disrupt people's lives or to target and persecute minorities. Act-Up were the past masters of it, I just wish people would learn from them.

Last year Just Stop Oil disrupted London's Pride March, before that we had TERFs disrupting it too. It makes me so angry when they do this because they are ignoring the history of London Pride. For so many years, in the 1970s and 80s, we had to fight to have the march, and the police presence was so heavy as if we were a danger to the general public. But Evangelical Christians, screaming their hate, really get to me. They want to strip us of our hard won rights and they want us to cease being - their conversion shit. Yet they are still tolerated and allowed to shout their hate by the police. They get a free pass on their hatred. Hate breeds hate, and I want that we stop tolerating and making excuses for it.