Fighting to save the Henderson

Neither is there a hierarchy of staff and patients; decisions are made as a community which meets six mornings a week among the artwork and the Playstation in the common room.

Set up by Dr Maxwell Jones in 1947 to accommodate traumatised ex-servicemen who were finding it difficult to reintegrate into civilian life, the hospital has been offering an alternative method of psychiatric care for the past 60 years.

Studies have shown that people cost the state up to £116,000 less in benefits, health care and prison stays after being treated in the hospital, and yet in its 61st year the Henderson is threatened with closure.

It is not hygiene standards, uproar in the local community or staff disillusionment with the hospital's methods that threatens the Henderson, but rather a simple funding decision made by the Government.

Once funded by a Government agency, ensuring that any person fitting the criteria could get treatment there, the hospital was passed to a regional consortium of health authorities who had to pay £23,000 a year each for the service.

Now this payment is made on a cost per case basis, meaning, more often than not, cash-strapped primary care trusts are simply choosing not to refer patients.

Quite often this is a political decision, according to Henderson consultant Dr John Stevens.

"Who are the people that vote? Middle class, articulate people, not young people or poor people.

"The sort of people we treat at the Henderson are not the kind of people who turn up to public meetings or who put pressure on MPs.

"When a new drug that can cure breast cancer or can prevent blindness comes out, the pressure to fund that becomes irresistible.

"Our group of people with personality disorders are very unattractive. They are the hoodies' from deprived backgrounds and housing estates," he said.

Therapeutic community

Dr Stevens described one of the Henderson's typical patients - known internally as "residents" - although he admitted this was only a stereotype.

"People with personality disorder have chaotic, fractured relationships.

"They usually have severely disfunctional families with a father-figure who is absent, in prison or a serial father-figure. A depressed, alcoholic mother.

"The family does not know how to sit down and eat together and the children grow up without appropriate behaviour boundaries.

"They do badly at school and are often in trouble with teachers and get expelled or suspended. Many of them are abused physically, psychologically and sexually and some end up in local authority care where they may get abused again."

The Henderson, he said, was a therapeutic community where people in this cycle of chronic neglect learn appropriate behaviour boundaries.

This can include learning how to overcome self-harming urges, eating disorders and criminal behaviour.

"A self-harmer, for example, will need to learn how to use a knife to cut carrots for a meal rather than to harm themself.

"Our windows are glass because if someone hits it, it will shatter - that's ordinary life.

"This is one of the differences between us and psychiatric hospitals - they would have plastic knives and perspex windows," said Dr Stevens.

After the community meeting, residents will attend various groups and workshops such as art and dance therapy, and will have to contribute to the running of the hospital, such as cooking or gardening.

Therapy is community-based with residents leading group discussions and consultants sitting in the background to offer advice and opinion.

Support

Dr Stevens pointed out that standard hospitals were "policed" by nursing staff despite the fact that the people in the know about rule-breaking are the fellow patients.

This makes them an effective tool in the recovery of themselves and others.

Former resident Maz said this peer support was what helped her overcome her suicidal thoughts.

"Somebody will say, Don't you think that you're not dealing with your feelings and acting them out by refusing to eat anything this week?' And you will say, You were doing it last week.' We called this hypocritical feedback'."

After a traumatic childhood Maz developed eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, daily urges to self-harm and problems with alcohol. Psychiatric treatment did not help her and she was referred to the Henderson after she had a nervous breakdown.

The counsellor who referred her felt she could not cope with Maz's behaviour and later gave up the job.

"I'm not particularly proud of that fact but it shows how draining personality disorder can be on other people," said Maz.

She described arriving at the Henderson as a "shock to the system".

"It's not an easy option. A lot of people really struggle with it as you cannot escape your feelings there. You eat, sleep and live therapy.

"It is impossible for anything to go unnoticed. Everything is up for scrutiny and analysis - even how you make a cup of tea," she said.

She is just one of many former residents who have rallied around the hospital to campaign to keep it open.

Campaign

Dr Stevens said someone, who he imagines must be a former resident, even took out a full page advert in the Bury Times to make a direct request to constituency MP and health minister Ivan Lewis not to close the hospital.

Sutton MPs Tom Brake and Paul Burstow secured an adjournment debate to call for the hospital to be saved, and last week a group of cross-party politicians and councillors, staff, residents and past residents took their campaign lobby to Westminster.

Merton Council's health scrutiny panel has called for a public consultation into the closure and Dr Stevens said Sutton Council was expected to do the same. The closure has been postponed from March to May, but this still leaves little time for a Government change of heart.

"There are people who have been through horrendous, unspeakable experiences. They need to be able to work through the issues in a safe environment.

"To close the hospital would be a disgrace," said Maz.

She is now working and knows how to deal with the urge to self-harm on the now rare occasions it rears its ugly head.

She believes her time spent in the Henderson saved her life.

More than 3,000 signatures on an online petition to Government to save the hospital suggests she is not alone.