The trouble with labels
Friends often enquire about my work. They find it hard to relate to the concepts of partnerships and development. They want to hear about people. A person with multiple problems is helpful shorthand for those of us who work in the field but spoken out loud to a friend or relative, it sounds like jargon and it is. So I tell them about Jacky.
Jacky was a tall middle-aged Glaswegian, whom I met several years ago while working in a service for street drinkers. At first sight he appeared emaciated, pale and unkempt with a spectral air as he swayed against the door frame clutching a can of strong lager. Speaking softly, he explained that as I was new, he had come to introduce himself. Aside from the drink, Jacky told me his health was poor and his nerves were bad.
Later, he would describe the horror of his voices, specifically the denigrating voice of Satan, who commanded him to end his life. I believe in the trade, he said, you call it paranoia. The drinking helped to drown the voices, where medication had failed. Perhaps sensing my anxiety, he attempted to reassure me telling me that psychiatric assessment had demonstrated that he presented no risk to me. The main risk, he added, is that I will harm myself.
Over the following months, Jacky described a childhood of abject poverty in a household with a mother who was serious mentally unwell and a tyrannical violent father, punctuated by what he called “fair beatings”, one of which ultimately resulted in a fractured skull and entry to the care system.
Hanging with the wrong crowd, Jacky became involved in a fight outside a dancehall. When one youth was seriously injured, Jacky was found guilty of serious assault and served a lengthy prison sentence. He left prison never to return and became homeless, developing a serious drinking problem. He expressed remorse for his youthful crime.
Over the years, Jacky has acquired a series of labels – street drinker, sporadic mental health service user, someone with a dual diagnosis or complex needs, homeless man, and ex-offender. He had been assessed by countless professionals and helped by some, he said. He could recite with ease their pronouncements of his problems. Jacky was also intelligent, insightful, articulate and possessed of a gloomy charm. Over the months we discovered a shared love for the music of Merle Haggard and the writings of Brendan Behan.
Labels can be useful shorthand but they can also lead to fear and prejudice. I believe that primarily we use them to avoid facing the painful and brutal reality of lives like Jacky’s. We would rather not hear or see how they are failed, first by their parents and then by society. I believe it is our first duty to listen and bear witness. By listening we can hear the survivor. By casting aside the label we can get in touch with the person.
I lost touch with Jacky some years ago but when I think of him, I like to imagine him in a heavenly bar deep in conversation with Brendan Behan.
