On the railways we see quite a few people with mental health issues one way or another.\u00a0 Anyone who does customer service with the public is bound to. When I\u2019m cooking BBQ for the other staff at the show, I get a chance to catch up on the news from round our region and this year we somehow got to talking about mental health issues. In particular three women \u2013 B\u2014A — and H — who regularly appear at railway stations and threaten self harm (code word for jumping under a train) Everyone has a story of dragging these ladies off the tracks, restraining them, or handcuffing them to a rail until the police and social workers come.<\/p>\n
The most famous of these is B.\u00a0 I never met her, but I suspect she was the subject of the regular weekly SMS you used to see on the system. <<Train delays. Female threatening self harm at S– .>><\/p>\n
One of my current workmates knew her as a child and says she was a nice kid but that the family was seriously dysfunctional.<\/p>\n
For a long time the rumor has been floating round that B finally went under a train and is dead, but at the show one of the ticket inspectors said he\u2019d seen her all cleaned up and with a little girl on some kind of access visit.\u00a0 I hoped this was true but on the last night of the show another ticket inspector told me he\u2019d seen the report.\u00a0 B was dead.\u00a0 She\u2019d slipped and fallen while standing on a bridge parapet threatening to jump. Sad and particularly so for the daughter.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve described A– in a previous post.\u00a0 She\u2019s an overweight woman in her late twenties who sometimes visits the junction when I was at the barriers.\u00a0 She is often wearing a wrist band and usually she has a bandage on some injury or other.<\/p>\n
She sits and smokes and tells you hair raising stories of how she took 7 sleeping pills on a country train and had to be put off and how she gets scary voices and how she likes to torment the security guards who all hate her and are out to get her anyway. She tells all these stories in a jolly voice as one would tell a joke. At first her weird narcissistic need to impress scared me.\u00a0 4 hours of it can be pretty overwhelming.\u00a0 Then a workmate told me that whenever it gets too much, say \u201cthe boss is getting angry with me for chatting and I have to stop now.\u201d Oddly enough A respects this and takes herself off.<\/p>\n
Now I have an escape hatch I find I can talk to A– ok, especially since one of the security guards told me she loves cats. So I do my best to get her onto the subject of cats. But what I really want to ask her is \u201cwhy??\u201d Why do this? Surely there must be more satisfying ways to spend the short life you have. Maybe the right words at the right time might put her back on track.<\/p>\n
I never seemed to have got the chance to say it and I suspect it\u00a0doesn\u2019t work like that anyway. \u00a0A– eyes gleam with mania as she tells her stories. I suspect she has little else in her life. Logic doesn\u2019t apply here.<\/p>\n
The third self harmer H– I know quite well. For a while she was attending the youth mental health service near my station and one day I found and held her wallet for her until she came back.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s a solid sort of girl in her early teens, the sort of fierce gallant girl who would be good at rugby or roller derby, someone who might be a bully or a protector against bullies. I\u2019ve seen her acting like an idiot on the train surrounded by a handful of slightly sneering school fellows going \u201cOh that\u2019s just H–\u201d.\u00a0 She used to sit sometimes on the edge of the platform with her legs over the edge and I\u2019d tell her she was worrying me but leave it at that.\u00a0 One time she\u2019d clearly had a bad day because she stood on the side of the platform with her toes sticking out over the edge just staring fiercely down onto the tracks.\u00a0 When the train came she just kept standing there. It managed to stop about three metres from her and the driver sat there looking worried.\u00a0 Stalemate!<\/p>\n
So I went over and put my arm round her and coaxed her away from the edge and stood between her and the train until it came in.\u00a0 She got on and was taken away and I didn\u2019t think anything more of it.\u00a0 Just adolescent hijinks. Getting a thrill out of stopping a train.<\/p>\n
Last time I saw her she told me she\u2019d moved away and wasn\u2019t travelling on that line anymore, which I took to be a good result.<\/p>\n
But was it?\u00a0 While working at the show, a ticket inspector tells me he\u2019s seen three security guards try to stop H– jumping on the tracks and that she\u2019s just as bad as the other two.\u00a0 He talks of mace.\u00a0 I so hope he\u2019s got the wrong person or that his information is out of date. She\u2019d seemed so much quieter and more confident the last time I\u2019d seen her.<\/p>\n
Everything I\u2019ve seen H– do, seems like just adolescent attention seeking behavior.\u00a0 But has it gone toxic \u2013 turned into as mental health issue – as it has in A– and B–? Will it take over and maybe take her life?<\/p>\n
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On the railways we see quite a few people with mental health issues one way or another.\u00a0 Anyone who does customer service with the public is bound to. When I\u2019m cooking BBQ for the other staff at the show, I get a chance to catch up on the news from round our region and this …<\/p>\n