Tuesday, 06 March 2012

Neighbouring and mental health

Being a neighbour is not necessarily straightforward: managing the relationships can be tricky and stressful. Those of us who have positive, easy-going relationships with our neighbours have much to be thankful for, the value of which is easily overlooked.

One of the problems in engaging with any neighbour at a mutually-acceptable level on the spectrum between provocatively negative and intrusive, is to assess the other’s communication impulse and readiness. Somehow you have to find out where they are on the scale between ‘gab about everything endlessly’ to stubborn dull silence about most aspects of life as it passes by; and they have to do the same for you.

At any point on this range, but especially at the extremes, your neighbour could be someone with mental health problems. And as Clare Allan suggests in a Guardian article today that I encourage you to read,

‘in the age of the "big society", professional support is being cut dramatically. Situations such as this are going to become ever more common.’

So are we ready for it, as a moderately-sized society? How good are we at connecting at the right level – not too close, not too easily drawn-in, but close enough to react fast in case of real need - with neighbours whose mental health is not what it might be? It’s hard to think of anything more important to get right, at local level; but I fear there will be many tales of avoidance, misapprehension, ignorance and recoil.

 

 

6 Mar 2012 20:53:44 | Neighbourhood relations, Social exclusion

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'I want to recreate that sense of community' I’m not doing this to be mischievous, honestly. I read the following paragraph, the sort of statement that reaches me about once a week on average: “I grew up in [N], in a neighborhood where my family knew everyone on the block and we all looked out for each other. All the kids played together, and if we did anything wrong our parents would hear about it from one of the neighbors. I wanted to recreate that sense of community.” And for some reason, you know how it is, this is what I interpreted: “I grew up in Placetown, in a neighbourhood where my family knew everyone and truly nasty rumours abounded and there was a lot of obvious domestic violence that no-one talked about and if you were gay you just had to suppress it, and if you were disabled you were patronised if you were lucky but doomed anyway. All the kids played together (except of course that little disabled girl, can't even remember her name) so there was no end of bullying that you had to put up with and if we did anything wrong our parents would hear about it from one of the neighbours, who made it their business to exert control because they’d missed out on promotion in the army during the war, and my god they could be vindictive and brutal. I want to recreate that sense of community, cos I’m like that.” Yes maybe I'm being a little unfair.. But the rosetinting of community really is unhelpful, because it stifles serious policymaking about neighbourhoods. I know that many neighbourhoods in the past were much better in some respects and much worse in others. Now, can we move on?
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Neighbours for half a century Here’s a story from the Sheffield Telegraph about a group of residents who are celebrating 50 years in common on the same street, having moved in at the time the estate was built. It raises an interesting question about the notion that neighbourhoods should have a variety of housing to accommodate changing personal and family needs over the life cycle. Presumably the houses have been more-or-less suitable throughout the residents’ lifetimes; and the tight local network of support is likely to help them overcome some of the difficulties that in other circumstances cause people to move elsewhere.

Kevin Harris

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