Home: Guests, Friends, and Family
by Graeme Curry
I acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia in whose land I am privileged to live and work, to pay attention, to listen and to hear, to study and to learn. I honour their elders, past, present, and future.
Before I had ever heard of it, I was involved in community mental health. In early 1970, at the age of 21, I joined the Anglican Society of Saint Francis (SSF), a Franciscan community on the outskirts of Brisbane. Here we were about 14 brothers and we had room for about 12 men to stay with us—‘our guests’—mainly those who had been in psychiatric hospitals, or in prison, or had experienced homelessness or issues with drugs or alcohol. They shared our day-to-day life; we all ate meals together and we worked together around the house or farm. Some stayed for a few weeks, months, or even years. We provided a home and a family as they looked to re-establish their lives in the wider community. From the age of 17, before I joined SSF, I had spent some weeks in the university holidays staying with the brothers. On those four visits I shared the same accommodation in the dormitory as the other ‘guests’ of the community.
Graeme Curry in 1971 as a member of the Anglican Society of Saint Francis (SSF). Courtesy Graeme Curry.
While at the University of Sydney, I was (and have continued to be intermittently over many years) a parishioner of the Anglican parish of Christ Church Saint Laurence (CCSL) at the Central Railway end of George Street. CCSL is a sacred space, daily open to all. It is regarded by some as maybe somewhat eccentric, eclectic, even extraordinary. Those who frequent and live on the streets around CCSL have taught me much and inspired me over many years in my life and work.
After three-and-a-half years in SSF, I left the community and finished my second degree. In 1976, I moved to Melbourne where I lived with three friends. I needed a job and they all happened to be psychiatric nurses. They suggested I apply for a job at Royal Park Hospital as a ward assistant. I was assigned to the male and female lock-up wards. After a few days I realised that these people who were locked up were my ‘friends’ just like the ‘guests’ with whom I had lived as a brother and as a student. I had never really viewed these people as ‘psychiatric patients’! I loved working there and returned to Sydney later that year with the intention of beginning my formal training as a psychiatric nurse.
When I applied to be a student nurse at Rozelle Hospital (Callan Park and Broughton Hall had just been amalgamated under this new name), I was told I was overly qualifi ed. I persisted and insisted that I was keen to become a psychiatric nurse. Visiting my parents soon after, I told them of my new job. It was at this time that my father revealed to me for the first time that he had been a patient in Broughton Hall in the early 1940s. He was very depressed after a long-term relationship had ended and during his short admission he received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). From what he told me, the first ward I was working in was probably the ward where he had been a patient! These people were not only ‘friends’, they were also in some sense ‘family’.
While a student nurse at Gladesville Hospital in the late 1970s, there continued to be talk about moving more patients from hospital to community. Some patients had been in the hospital thirty or forty years or more. Some had never left the hospital at all during this time. On one occasion, I took a small group of patients from the male lockup ward to a local milk bar. They had never been there before. When they were given the menu, it became obvious that none of them could read it. On a subsequent outing, we caught the bus into the city. Some of them had never seen the Harbour Bridge or the Opera House. Each of them was given twenty dollars for the day. A few of them gave the note to the bus driver and did not wait for any change. It was clear that both everyday literacy and numeracy skills were minimal. As a result of these experiences, in collaboration with the Psychological Assessment Centre, I did a small research study looking at the literacy of all the psychiatric inpatients over a four-year period. It was found that almost forty percent of all patients were functionally illiterate. Almost no one had taken this into account when preparing patients for discharge into the community.
From 1981 to 1983, I taught in the combined Rozelle/Gladesville School of Nursing. This was during the time of the Richmond Report and the large-scale deinstitutionalisation of hospital-based mental health services in NSW. For about a year, I was vice president of the Principles and Practice Division of the New South Wales Nurses Association, one of Australia’s major trade unions. At one time I was asked to be involved in a very large committee of professionals with little or no patient/consumer representation. We were given what superficially looked like a large amount of money to develop some transition programs. I resigned before the end of the first long-winded, inefficient committee meeting in protest that the whole process was a matter of ‘window dressing’. We were being given a pittance that would hardly purchase two or three houses to accommodate maybe fifteen former patients without adequate funding for renovations or ongoing staffing. It looked as if the major purpose of the process was to empty hospitals in order to obtain prime waterfront real estate and in the process cut funding for real services.
At a meeting regarding the recommendations of the Richmond Report with the minister for Health (Laurie Brereton) and the premier (Neville Wran), I found that the minister was totally unable to answer any of my questions regarding mental health services. He appeared to display gross ignorance of this aspect of his portfolio and the premier, who had been a junior lawyer on the Royal Commission into Callan Park in 1961, had to come to his rescue. At least Wran had some awareness of the issues involved. It was clear that the political processes surrounding the development of community health services were not subject to thorough planning and transparent scrutiny. For a short time in 1983/1984, I had the privilege of working on the mental health team at the Bondi Junction Community Health Centre, under the creative leadership of a psychiatric nurse, Matina Pentes.
Graeme Curry as a student psychiatric nurse in 1977. Courtesy Graeme Curry.
This service was innovative and unique in that it consisted of a collaboration between five teams (baby health, generalist, mental health, drug and alcohol, health promotion). This meant, for example, that if I was working with an elderly patient with dementia, I could work closely with members of the generalist team to ensure holistic, integrative patient care. Also, if working with a mother with post postpartum psychosis, I could work with members of the baby health team. All members of all five teams (including medical practitioners) were responsible to Matina, ensuring a level of cross-disciplinary coordination and care virtually unknown in many other services. This very successful and innovative model was to be over time systematically dismantled for a range of political and professional turf reasons.
From 1985 to 1996, I taught psychiatric/mental health nursing and the history and philosophy of nursing at Kuring-gai College of Advanced Education (KCAE)/University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). During this time, I supervised many nursing student clinical placements in alternative community-based mental health services. These included some involvement with the Independent Community Living Association (ICLA) in the Bondi area and Saint Francis Communities in the inner city. These placements in the community provided students with a diff erent way of perceiving and relating to individuals with so-called mental health issues. These were ordinary people living in ordinary homes in ordinary neighbourhoods.
At KCAE/UTS I was involved in a number of other projects. The Street Kids Access to Tertiary Education program (SKATE), of which I was director for two years, had been developed initially by Ann Gray, head of the Department of Nursing. It enabled young people with a variety of needs to directly access tertiary education via the bridging course SKATE provided. During this time, I was also greatly privileged to be invited to participate in the Aboriginal Mental Health Worker Curriculum Development Group. This was under the direction and supervision of Robyn Shields, an Aboriginal nurse and leader. The strong community ownership and primary health care focus of this project emphasised a more holistic understanding of ‘social and emotional wellbeing’. This kind of model could also be benefi cial in other mental health settings.
In the mid-90s, I returned to Brisbane where I worked voluntarily as a lay pastoral assistant in the Anglican parish of St Alban’s Auchenfl ower as well as establishing my own private practice in advocacy, counselling, and consultancy. In my counselling practice, I worked with individuals, couples and families. I especially worked with those who identifi ed as LGBTIQ+. My consultancies included the planning of an illicit drug project with St Luke’s Nursing Service; a Peer Advocacy services development project with the Mental Health Association (Qld); a community-based pharmacy project; and community development and education projects with A Place to Belong, an Anglicare mental health project.
My work in the parish included opening the Church at certain times during the week and running some free informal community-based discussion groups such as ‘Madness on Mondays’. I had previously been involved in similar work with the Anglican Church at St Peter’s East Sydney (part of the parish of St John’s Darlinghurst) where I had been the convenor of the St Peter’s Action and Renewal Committee (SPARC). These discussion groups were very popular and seemed to fi ll a real need for people with mental health issues, their relatives, friends, and supporters. They involved reflecting together on our diverse experience; building informal networks of friendship, encouragement, and support; and increasing an overall openness, acceptance, and understanding.
In Brisbane from 2001 to 2004, I also worked as a telephone counsellor with Kids Help Line providing support and counselling to children and young people from all over Australia. This included significant work with adolescents at risk of self harm and/or suicide. Back in Sydney from late 2007, I was once again involved with telephone work both with Parent Line (NSW) and Quitline (NSW/ACT). During some of this time, I also became an accredited Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) trainer involved in co-facilitating MHFA courses for professionals and community groups. For most of 2016, I was able to return to face-to-face individual counselling work with the Stimulant Services at St Vincent’s Hospital as well as having the role of Stimulant Treatment Program (STP) Sector Development coordinator. This latter role involved a range of liaison and education roles, including with prison officers, sex workers, health professionals and other community groups.
Some have described me as something of a ‘chameleon’! My career and life experience has been wonderfully diverse, fascinating, and challenging. I have been privileged to have many opportunities of service in many contexts. Community mental health involves all of us in our relationships with one another within our sociocultural, ecological, and spiritual contexts. We are not separate from the spiritual, natural, and human worlds in which we live. This is about stillness, attentiveness, gentleness, culturally appropriate primary health care, community control, community-based resources, welcoming/inclusive communities, appropriate services, and networks of support. It is about having our own secure home, ease of access to our sacred places, our safe places of refuge/of asylum (in the best sense of the word). It is about having meaningful work/activity and the economic security we need. It is about opportunities for education, training, and creativity that enable each of us to flourish.
My understanding of what community mental health means has been shaped by many factors including my own personal identity, spirituality, and experience of difference and uniqueness. I believe that one of the only things we have in common as human beings is that we have nothing in common! Each and every one of us is unique and special. This is our shared humanity. We do not need to be like everyone else. It is important to acknowledge, appreciate, and respect that each individual is different. Communities are also unique and special. Individuals and communities may change over time and in new circumstances. Our approach to working with one another (no matter what labels are put on us by others or that we place on ourselves) is to regard ourselves as equals no matter what our differences. Community is about learning to be at ‘home’ with one another as guests, friends, and family.
Graeme Curry RN BA(Hons) BD DipEd MA FACN FACMHN registered as a psychiatric nurse in 1980. As well as clinical practice in hospital, community, residential care facilities, and private practice; he taught nursing in hospital, college and university as well. He was active in various community mental health initiatives in Sydney and Brisbane including advocacy, counselling, and community development. Graeme has academic qualifications in philosophy, religion, nursing education, and Australian urban history. He is a Fellow of the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses (ACMHN) and the Australian College of Nursing (ACN). Graeme has spent most of his life in Sydney. He has also lived and worked in Melbourne, Brisbane, Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh, Far North Queensland, and Western Victoria.
This reflection appeared in Health and History 24, vol 2 (2022): 105-110.