I will be the first to admit that I laughed when I read that Broadmoor was going to have its own hotel. Broadmoor and I have a long history; I went to school far far too close. Do you know that every Monday morning at 10 o’clock Broadmoor has an alarm that goes off? Thought not. Could I hear it at school? You bet. That sort of knowledge builds a bond with a place.
Broadmoor has, for several years, been subject to lack of funding- much like the majority of mental health facilities in this country. In fact it has been declared ‘unfit for purpose’ since 2003 according to the Commission for Healthcare Improvement. Therefore the step has been taken to have a hotel and a housing development commissioned as an answer to this problem and to create enough funding for ten new wards.
This may to some of you seem like an ideal solution. Financially it removes the drain on our already depleted government funds and provides what could consistently be a source of income for the hospital. Perfect right?
It gets better. Both the housing and the hotel will be behind the high security perimeter and shaded by trees. Therefore this development provides neither problem for patient or visitor.
But there’s still that niggle isn’t there? The one in the back of your mind. The one that says that this isn’t quite right. I have it too- because doesn’t this ring echoes of Bedlam, the Victorian mental asylum? Are we still of the opinion that we can simply hide our country’s problems in places like Broadmoor?
I find it tragic that in our supposedly cosmopolitan ‘PC’ environment we are regressing to viewing mental patients as a spectacle of ‘hysterical women and crazy madmen’ as described by clinical psychologist Professor Til Wykes, in order to create funding for them. Mental health cannot be viewed as an inconvenience as it is not done intentionally. Today, mental health is still a no go area with only 5% of medical research focussing on it, creating a huge liability for the future of our society. Society suddenly isn’t so big when people who need help, at last count 16.7 million in the UK alone, are falling through the cracks. Cracks which are costing us £77 billion a year.
Priorities and our values as a society need to be reassessed. However I fail to see how Broadmoor having its own hotel to create basic funding is going to be the solution.
The fact that they’re building a hotel next to it, won’t that help make mental health less less of a taboo, ‘hush-hush’ issue with all the publicity the build will get and the increased visitors? Isn’t it kind of a good thing?
Hi Anna, I’m all for making mental health issues less “hush hush” and taboo but I don’t see how creating a spectacle out of it, in a way which you wouldn’t do for let’s say cancer patients, is going to help society in understanding it. Building a hotel is ideal financially and in theory for publicity but doesn’t tackle the real issues here. Does that help clarify the article?
Firstly, why is this article relevant to students at York when the hospital is in Berkshire? The thing is though, this isn’t the first time this has happened – so this point you’re making isn’t new. Where I’m from in England, in East Lancashire, I can think of two mental health hospitals where expensive housing estates have been built either on the land or next to the site. I really don’t think that people will book a room in a hotel for the ‘spectacle’ of it being near a hospital – or buy a house as from my experience this surely wasn’t the case. From your article I would infer that in order to improve the facilities for the patients at Broadmoor, this was a way of making money that would be separate from the hospital. But maybe I don’t know enough about it
Dear Third Year,
I am replying, not because I feel the need to defend my article- I would be happy to be in the wrong on this issue- but because the issues you raise in your comment intrigued me.
First of all- as you yourself point out, we are not all from Yorkshire and would be limiting our views of society if Vision only concerned itself with York.
Secondly, and excuse me if I’m wrong, my knowledge is somewhat lacking when it comes to mental health hospitals in Lancashire! I could only find two hospitals that contained up to medium secure mental illness patients (The Priory Hospital, Preston and Alpha Hosptial Bury). None contained high secure patients and none, as far as my research allowed, contained those that had been convicted of serious crimes, or been found unfit to plead in a trial for such crimes. Thus, unlike Broadmoor, it is removed from the category of spectacle inducing.
Thirdly, this would mean that any housing estates or hotels built near or on the grounds could be for those who are family members of suffers of eating disorders, post traumatic stress or addiction. These sufferers are getting younger every year, so family in combating the aforementioned becomes very important
Fourthly, the land was sold by the trust that runs Broadmoor, therefore creating money for Broadmoor. This money allows Broadmoor to improve its faculties. The point of my article was that this way of fundraising for high security mental health faculties- Ashworth and Rampton included was wrong as it could encourage the objectification of those suffering severe mental health problems.But maybe I don’t know enough about it.
I don’t understand the leap of logic between the fact of them building the hotel, and the suggestion that doing so means we are somehow regressing as a society, or that the hotel will be used as some sort of viewing platform for the mentally ill. Without any evidence in that direction beyond conjecture, the point’s fairly thin I think.
I don’t see a thing wrong with it. In fact, I’d go further and say that it would be negligent to fail to use land in an intelligent manner because of some imagined concern about its vicinity to a mental hospital: especially if the land-use would specifically benefit the hospital.
Also, second what the chap above said. He/she isn’t suggesting that Vision should only be concerned with matters within a 2 mile radius of the campus, but attempting to shoe-horn an irrelevant matter from Berkshire into the paper under the flimsy guise of some imagined wider point about perceptions of mental health is slightly cheap journalism.