Systems that take the Kate
Katherine Raue is a fellow blogwriter, her website Transparency in New Zealand (TiNZ) is a pandora’s box of “serious allegations coupled with indisputable evidence of serious and systemic incompetence and corruption within the New Zealand Police, and other organisations.” Among some, that focus has not made her friends.
And this title? It’s a play on the phrase to ‘take the cake,’ symbolic of a prize for a victory. It’s a phrase that’s been around a while in fact from as early as the 5th century BC. In 420 BC the Greek Aristophanes wrote ‘The Knight’ which was a criticism of the powerful Athenian politician Cleon: “If you surpass him in impudence the cake is ours.”
Kate is a friend. These thoughts are my way of trying to understand how she came to be, in my opinion, ‘improperly detained’ in Rangipapa, a “Forensic Female Admission Unit which caters for acute patients, some from Arohata Womens Prison and some patients working towards recovery.
The Unit also has male patients who are progressing towards rehabilitation and are relatively well. It is a medium security secure unit, having approximately 12 to 14 patients at any one time.”
The Tidal Model
Rangipapa is among the mental health services offered by the Capital & Coast DHB. Like similar services on offer in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Japan and Canada it uses the Tidal Model. This is a philosophical approach to the discovery of mental health. By philosophical, practitioners mean it as “a way of thinking about how people might reclaim their personal story, as a first step towards recovering their lives.”
They ‘reclaim’ their stories by recovering their voice using their own language, metaphors and personal stories. Practitioners of the Tidal Model say these are the first step towards helping people recover control over their lives. In the theory of the model, people begin to express something of the meaning of their lives through this process.
However, that doesn’t appear to be what’s happening in practice at Rangipapa. In fact I’m at a loss to understand its application in Kate’s case. She seems to have lost so much of any kind of control of her life since her admission there on 8 March 2011, 54 days ago.
Tidal Waves
The Tidal model created a number of firsts at its inception. It was a first as a “mental health recovery model developed conjointly by mental health nurses and people who have used mental health services. It was also a first as a recovery-focused model of Mental Health Nursing recognised internationally as a significant mid-range theory of nursing and in its use as the basis for interdisciplinary mental health care.”
“In the Tidal Model every emphasis is given to helping the person learn directly from experience. Tidal rejects the traditional psychiatric idea that professionals can know more about the person, and the person’s life, than the person themselves. The model maintains that the person is always the expert!
In Kate’s case, there are some staff who don’t think that way! This is reflected in one staffer’s note: ” It is difficult to distinguish at what point an over-valued idea moves farther along the spectrum into a delusional belief … “
May I suggest that outside the ‘psychiatric-context’ of Rangipapa, but in the context of recent history, a note such as the one above would have meant Egypt’s democratic revolution might also have been considered an ‘over-valued idea’ by that writer.
Were the millions of peaceful protestors delusional in their attempt to overthrow the regime of Hosni Mubarak? Watching from the sidelines one might have thought so. Hindsight shows us they did, fact.
They did so, seeking change for a greater good, not because they were delusional.
Points along the Spectrum
As far as I know, Kate’s never led a group of people to commit mass suicide to the delusional enth of the likes of Jim Jones or Vernon Wayne Howell aka David Koresh. Neither has she wrecklessly endangered the lives of others in attempts to prove her point though I’ll concede she’s been vocal in her criticisms. That’s not a crime.
It seems to me, that at its heart, the Tidal Model attempts to do what nothing else has in the past — Good. However, the model is only a template. In the hands of administrators who have reputation and policy in place perhaps there’s not the same emphasis on improvement. Why not? Stay with me as I look more closely at what’s going on. Let’s see just who has lost the plot!
RELATED POSTS
1. Model Citizen: A Piece of Kate 2. A Twist of Kate: The Castaway 3. Throwing Out the Lifelines 4. An Anchor in the Social World 5. Rights of Passage 6. Katherine 7. Ships in the Night 8. Alone Alone All All Alone 9. Systems that take the Kate
