Nonnie talks about their experiences of care and support. Their journey from 19-30 support and counselling in relation to mental health. Eventually Nonnie recieved a diagnosiis of autism. Nonnie describes their experiences of engaging with services post diagnosis, and the impact of that on them, but also the impact on the services they were acecssing.

Nonnie was referred to the High Intensity Use (HIU) team at the hospital which was pivotal in Nonnie finding a more creative outlet for managing their thoughts.

Nonnie has written many poems and reflections about their experiences, some of which helped to inform The Real Care Deal itself…

Transcript

 Hi, I’m Nonie Pippen and yeah, a 40-year-old dad of five and non-binary.

Brilliant, tell me a little bit about your experience of the care and support system and how you’ve been part of that?

Firstly, to say the NHS are brilliant and what they do is absolutely perfect. It’s not a, not in any way disparaging on them, but yeah, I found being a 13-year-old boy was quite challenging and emotional and lots of anxiety, which then later went at 19, I think that became quite depression related. So I got picked up by NHS GP’s to start with between the ages of 19 and 30, I was mainly going to the GP. There was some counseling involved and that was all focused around family life and up upbringing. And then I think later life. So I got a diagnosis in 2015 for OCD, obsessive Compulsive Disorder related to the cognitive side, so to do with obsessive thoughts obsessive ruminations tragic stuff that was going around my mind that was really making me unhappy.

And then 2017, I got picked up with definite Asperger’s syndrome, which is now part of autistic spectrum disorder or condition. I’m not sure what.

What difference did that make to you Nonnie, having that sort of insight or diagnosis?

I found it interesting that there was that two year gap because the discussion really started at that meeting with the consultant psychiatrist in 2015 when I just looked him in the face and went, I really can’t understand what people are thinking.I can’t read their faces. That was a light bulb moment. Something’s different about the way that I think I still got tied up with the Norfolk Suffolk Foundation Trust Mental Health community team, and also the residential team as well, for quite a time in and out of hospitals. Some A&E hospitals, some mental health hospitals.

Quite scary times, quite scary experiences of what I came across. Things like being attacked and being treated like I was, a very ill patient at times and being treated like I was a bit of a time waster at times. So yeah, that was quite hard when they said, just don’t complicate things. Don’t explain it.Just say you’ve got a mental health condition and we’ll refer you to the on-call mental health team and they’ll send you home.

So how did you end up being, in hospital the first time?

I was not really making attempts on my life. I was more doing a cry for help. So my cry for help were on the lines of, I would sit on the platform of a train station or I’d lie in the road, not really definitely making any attempts, just being really risky and trying to get the attention of the NHS.

In 2021 and 22, that became a lot more problematic because that was to do with phone calls to the 999 numbers I was following a very autistic pattern of what was in my safety plan, which was to call my appointed worker who would not answer it, would go to voicemail.

To call the duty team who would tell me to not bother them. That was that wasn’t that I wasn’t having a crisis to call the crisis team. I’d follow this pattern quite rigidly, and then to call the 111 service who would do the 999 call usually. But if they were too busy, I would make the 999 call myself.

Spending a lot of time with paramedics and ambulance drivers over fears of having heart attacks. Of having cancer brain tumors, everything was in my head about what was making me so ill. 

That just makes so much sense in many ways and so were in and out of hospital because of that fear?

In one week, I think I attended hospital seven times. I think that was at the worst. And then I got referred to a high intensity user team who said I was above their level.

Is that as in A&E?

It’s as in A&E records every instance that you’re there. If you’re there a lot of times, then they refer it. The lovely chap that I spoke to said he was one of eight people in the county of East Anglia that could actually take on people. And at the point when I was still calling the police ambulance coast Guard crumbs, I know them all personally. People like Christian and Paul and others that I’ve got to know personally, Richard, who immediately recognized me, even though we were in a completely foreign location.

I think we were just, we just met in the woods and he sent about six or seven police cars and an ambulance. 

And what was so what was the role of that person then from that high intensity team?

He was managing , to try and avoid this situation happening? The big turning point happened when I got to see someone from the crisis team who suggested maybe there was a better outlet for all this energy and thoughts, and he talked about something called the endless poem.

And at the same time another counselor mentioned to me the seven minute splurge. What those concepts are is to put thoughts down so they don’t occupy thought space at all. They just occupy paper. Yeah. That has grown. So I’ve now published a poem and I have published a book.

I’ve got another book which documents all the, all of this that I’ve described to you happening. More like a journalistic memoir type book, which I haven’t published yet.