Amita Patel took her own life on Thursday, July 15th, while at Beachy head.

She had been on a ward at Lambeth Hospital for about ten days. On Wednesday 14th she was on day leave from the hospital and did not return. Her body was found by the East Sussex authorities on Thursday morning. On Wednesday 21st July Amita's body was officially identified by her sisters Laxmiben and Umaben who had travelled from abroad, and by her close friend Rashmi. They said that she looked very peaceful.  Amita had a long and respected history with Survivors Poetry.  She was a Camden workshop facilitator for many years, and also set up a group in her local borough with Lambeth MIND.  She was a graduate of the Survivors Poetry Mentoring Scheme, being, in fact, mentored by no less a personage than our patron, Debjanee Chatterjee MBE, who has this to say of her charge.  

“One senses that here is a poet who is on a journey, and on her ‘Paper Road’ she encounters many guides, beginning with ‘everybody’s ancestor’ – the monkey Anjana, who gives her a pen and bids her ‘begin.’  Journeys are a recurring theme in Amita’s poems; journeys that entail risk-taking and adventure.  Her poems strike a chord for she speaks as a fellow-traveller to every reader on Life’s journey.”

 Debjanee also says this : “her poem ‘We are Candles’ echoes the Buddha’s message – to be lamps unto oneself.  A ‘Survivor’ in the truest sense of the word, Amita is one who lights a candle.  Her poetry glows with clarity and wisdom in a chaotic world.”

Survivors’ Poetry extends its deepest sympathies to her family.

Amita's funeral will take place on Wednesday 28th July (which is also her birthday) at 1.15pm at Lambeth Crematorium (which is actually in Tooting, in the London Borough of Wandsworth):

Lambeth Crematorium

Blackshaw Road

Tooting, London SW17 0BY

Tel: 020 8672 6342. 
Nearest tube: Tooting Broadway.

The latest national statistics on Attitudes to Mental Illness produced by the Department of Health were released on 30 March 2010 according to the arrangements approved by the UK Statistics Authority. Authored by:  TNS UK for the National Mental Health Development Unit, Department of Health

Since March 1994, the Department of Health has placed a set of questions on TNS’s Face-to-Face Consumer Omnibus about public attitudes towards mental illness. From 1994 to 1997 the questions were asked on an annual basis and then every third year up until 2003. 

Since 2007 the survey has again been carried out annually. The surveys serve as a benchmark, enabling measurement of whether attitudes are improving or worsening over time. The questionnaire included a number of statements about mental illness. Respondents were asked to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with each statement.

Key points from the report:

People are broadly sympathetic towards people with a mental illness. However, some attitudes towards people with mental illness are worse compared to when the Department of Health first commissioned the poll in 1994 whilst a number have improved. Several attitudes that had worsened over the period up until 1997 have since improved.

Attitudes to a number of statements have changed between 2009 and 2010.   

Opinions on some statements changed towards greater tolerance, for example:
- ‘Locating mental health facilities in a residential area downgrades the neighbourhood’ - agreement with this statement decreased from 21% to 18%.

Some opinions moved more in favour of integrating people with mental illness into the community, for example:
- ‘Residents have nothing to fear from people coming into their neighbourhood to obtain mental health services’ – agreement with this statement increased from 62% to 66%.On one item though, opinions moved less in favour of integration:
- ‘Mental hospitals are an outdated means of treating people with mental illness’ – agreement with this statement fell from 37% in 2009 to 33% in 2010.

For full survey in pdf :  click here
 

Writer in Residence Position at The Hosking Houses Trust
Deadline: Monday - 12th April 2010  

Forthcoming Mentoring Scheme Publications in 2010         

Joanna Watson
Inkblotting

Joanna Watson’s poems have been quietly winning prizes and appearing in well-regarded journals for many years.   Collected here, they gift the reader with an

array of her most particular talents: pointillist portraits of extreme circumstances; pizzazzy neologisms and strict formal challenges; tender probings of

uncomfortable yet uncomplaining truths.
Naomi Foyle
Poet and Mentor

Bruce James
Songs from Silence

There is honesty without device in Bruce James’ selected poetry. People that have known him and his work over the years will be pleased to hear of this

collection. The texts swell in confidence without mischief as the songs spring from very real places that many of us are only briefly privy to, and are here

transcribed by James’ for already trusted, and new audiences.  In the telling of  histories and the survival of ourselves in relation to the natural, built and spiritual

joinings with a nurturing heaven existing beyond what we have made of heaven, James shows the lived experience of the universe from the perspective of  ‘lights

coming on once the applause has diminished…’ – he is a rare and  gifted Poet.
Philip Ruthen
Writer, and Chair of Survivors’ Poetry  
 

 The Mentoring Scheme is funded by