I received an invitation to a book launch the other day. Unfortunately, I couldn't go because it was taking place in Gosport, where I used to live. "Service Users are very proud of this," the invitation said...
It's funny how quickly people erase your achievements from their memories. Now I'm nobody special, and don't expect to be treated as such, but you know, I'm actually one of those proud service users - even though I wasn't aware I'm meant to be proud - or that the publication I was working on with the rest of the crowd just three short months ago, is even now a book!
As far as I know, the book is still called, "The Good Information Guide to Psychosis;" and it still takes you on a visual journey to Planet Psychosis and back - noting various space-themed factors and influences along the way. The planet analogy started off as a joke about being back on planet normal at the start of one of the early, Monday morning meetings of what christened itself the Good Information Group - which had been establised within the Fareham & Gosport locality of Hampshire Partnership NHS Trust, to look at how service user-friendly psychoeducational material might be produced, in accordance with the National Institute for Clinical Excellene (NICE) Guidelines for Schizophrenia. From the joke came the suggestion that if there's a Planet Normal there must also be other 'planets' - and I was the first one to say it - Planet Psychosis - everyone else was too busy laughing...
I don't really mind the whole group taking the credit mind you - they all worked incredibly hard, with drawings, editing, wording, negotiating - and at the beginning of March, we even made the heady heights of what turned out to be an otherwise boring and stuffy Clinical Governance Conference in Winchester - at which we made a joint presentation, complete with PowerPoint illustrations. But I do wonder whose names the finished article includes in its credits page. Nobody has even thought to send or offer to send me a copy. Is it wrong to feel a little hurt by this, or to covet the potential results of flashing it under the eyes of those who may wish to give my CV more than the casual once-over?
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