August 16, 2003

What does therapist and former psychiatric nurse Phil Barker mean when he says: "I have also always been uncomfortable with the power associated with being a professional"? Adam James finds out

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Name an eminent thinker from 20th century psychiatry and mental health, and a psychologist, psychiatrist or philosopher might spring to mind. It's unlikely to be a psychiatric nurse.

But if it was, it might be Phil Barker.

The 56-year-old has, for the last three decades, been at the forefront in pushing for compassionate and ethical psychiatric nursing.

Specialising in psychotherapy he has had work published in around 30 books, been visiting professor at nine universities around the world, and rose to become professor of psychiatric nursing practice at University of Newcastle upon Tyne.

With more than 80 academic papers and magazine articles his contribution to psychiatric nursing, psychotherapy and mental health, was in September last year, acknowledged by Oxford Brookes University who made him an honorary doctor.

But Barker has now admitted it all has just not been enough.

He is tired both of the "diminishing returns" of academia and the feeling that his professional persona creates a power gulf between him and the service users he works with.

So, in July last year , he resigned from his professor post at Newcastle.

Together with his wife Poppy, a former social worker, the Scot is concentrating his efforts on running their training consultancy, Clan Unity.

Barker says: "It may sound a bit smug, but I played academia as far as I could go. I reached a point that I realised that I will be doing just more of the same."

"I have also always been uncomfortable with the power associated with being a professional. To always be introduced as 'Doctor Barker', or 'Professor Barker' carries with it a lot of power. I have always been interested in finding out what there was valuable in me as a person in providing assistance to people." Humble words.

Indeed, it is with similar humility that Barker cites his most important achievement during the last 30 years as being the creation in 1985 in Dundee of one of the first community based self-help projects for women diagnosed with psychotic illnesses.

He says: "Because we were based in ordinary settings there was much less stigma. It hit on the importance of taking mental health out of the hospital.

"That experience would have to be the thing I am most proud of. Because they [the women] accepted me as a human being. I learnt the power of ordinariness and humanity. That is what I want to get back into."

As is perhaps synonymous with being a psychotherapist Barker is candid about his childhood years, including his own "prolonged identity crisis" between the ages of 15 and 25 when he would experience tactile and visual "hallucinations".

"I would experience gross distortions of space," he explains.
"For example, when in a room the walls would move away in a very surreal perspective. I would feel my body was made of wax and very synthetic. This lasted on and off for several years. But although it was initially a problem, it was never disturbing."

Ever since Barker, after graduating with a fine arts degree, started nursing in 1969 he has been both a follower of Buddhist philosophy and the existentialism of psychoanalyst RD Laing.

Over the last three decades Barker has fused such existentialism with psychotherapy and Zen teaching in the development of a "Tidal Model" of recovery.

One of its premises is that a person is "metaphorically washed ashore" as a result of psychiatric crisis and suggests that "once a crisis has been identified, the person's lived experience becomes the centrepiece for an in-depth, collaborative assessment of what 'needs to be done' to help to 're-float' the shipwrecked person."

Barker adds: "For me psychosis is an inherently meaningful experience. I have never met anybody who was psychotic who did not make sense to me.

"For me what we call mental health problems are problems of being human"

Although a former professor in psychiatric nursing Barker has, during his career, spent just one year working on acute wards.

Nevertheless, he has pushed hard for nurses to engage openly and humanely with patients in the "milieu of an acute ward".

He says: "Time to do this, whether formally or informally, can always be found. And if nurses say they can not it may be that they are fearful of what that kind of engagement might involve.

"Many feel, for example, great anxieties about running group work. But group work can be an easy way to engage with people."

Clan Unity has, up to now, been running workshops based on Barker's and his wife's shared premise that "knowledge can only be gained through personal experience".

As before, Barker hopes such work will enable service users to find their own avenues of recovery.

"I am on a path in a Buddhist sense in the same way as they are," he says.

www.clan-unity.co.uk

See also:
May 10: Shock tactics - Prof Phil Barker hopes new advice on ECT treatment will lead to more responsible use of a 'dubious therapy'.

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I'm to use the Tidal Model

From: Helene Le Marechal, mental health support worker, Poole Floating Support team, Rethink. Ex-registered mental health nurse,
Date: January 9, 2008

I used to nurse like this and feel validated that I took this approach. I might be allowed to work for the NHS again soon so it will be a privilege to use the Tidal model there. I will also use it for Rethink right now.

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