In 2011, Dr Sarah Gordon, a New Zealand service-user academic at the Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Otago, Wellington wrote a personal account of surviving her own suicide attempts. The Engage Aotearoa team came across it again on Facebook this week. In the article, Gordon writes of her experiences partially in the third person and notes
The psychiatrist refused to entertain any notion of immediate discharge, however, reasoning that the patient seemed to have no relationship with anyone or anything. You see, the psychiatrist argued, relating to people is absolutely fundamental to living well. So that is what the woman did with the remainder of her time with the unit, which was a further five months: she worked on relearning and practicing relationships with herself, her family, her friends, and her community. And this is what she is doing now: actively engaging in her roles as a mother and wife, working, dancing, writing, celebrating holidays, and shopping (something she particularly enjoys).
