The Psychiatry Behind Equus

The Psychiatry Behind Equus | Stratford East

"My Name is Duncan, 

I'm an adolescent 

forensic psychiatrist;

I work with young people who do 

all kinds of strange things, 

from Society's perspective, that 

fall into the criminal arena -- 

They commit crimes and they do it, 

driven by things inside within -- 

The concept attracts mental illness, 

but also sometimes within traumas and 

things that happened to them in The Past. 

Myself and my colleague, Peter Mesh, 

we work together in a specialist

forensic service for a while now. 

We've been giving consultations to plays 

which have a kind of forensic overtones, 

like this one's a very forensic play --

My job is to try and understand these behaviours 

and the kind of behaviours that we see in this play 

is very much the bread and butter 

of what I actually do in my day job -- 

it feels very familiar to me. 

So Forensic Psychiatry is like the link between 

mental health issues and The Law, 

it's where these two things intersect; 

So you have a young person 

who has a mental health issue

and they'll do something that gets 

in theory 'nor of the courts and The Court is a very dichotomous black-and-white process :

Innocent or Guilty, and you've got 

two sides of The Court you got prosecution, 

defense and Psychiatry tries to get an illness 

or an understanding of a young person 

who's committed a crime from a kind of 

a mental health perspective and tries 

to make that work within a 

quite a dichotomous system and because 

often it's not very clear,  something --

you know, people are never good or bad 

-- it's never very clear cut and dry 

it's quite an artistic specialty; 

in a way it's about trying to understand 

what drives people's behaviors and 

I think ultimately that's 

what we ought to do --

It's about understanding what drives people,

what motivates them to do things which are 

kind of extraordinary sometimes, 

in a very negative way extraordinary 

but extraordinary. 

Learning The Lesson for me 

as a professional, linking 

my kind of love for arts and my 

thinking of it a forensic way

links really nicely to kind of 

clinical work in The Play --

It's not necessarily a conventional 

psychiatric approach, but it gets 

to the heart of something,

 and I think he's very interested in, 

you know, the drive, 

in what's driving this, 

how can you understand it ?

What Psychiatry is, it's about 

trying to find a mutual understanding 

between yourself as The Doctor 

and The Patient who's done something 

and sometimes it's about finding 

The Understanding and then 

helping the people around understand 

that it's what happened, whether 

it's in the court arena or whether 

it's just The Family or The Network, 

it's this event that's happened that's so shocking 

but what's driven this young person 

to do this and I think that's what The Play 

tries to understand -- I think that's really key

for this production is the sense of compassion 

one feels for a young person who's done 

this really terrible thing : that to me is key 

to this working, because then The Audience 

has to be brought along and feel compassion 

and curiosity and that's usually the antidote 

to something this truly horrific 

is maintaining a sense of curiosity so we tried to kind of build that we gave a few ideas like practical things and there was some there was some technical stuff we spoke about because it was written the 70s in there and we wanted to it kind of feel more contemporary in some ways but actually I think it was just more about yeah getting the idea of curiosity compassion these are the things that drivers and the drivers to kind of continue investigating when we might naturally put off by something that's quite horrible so you have to kind of balance the feelings within you and we try to kind of get that across I guess with a play like this especially if you people see this it could be very triggering it could bring them things I think the plate does dig deep in terms of the psyche of the characters and I think it's important with an artistic endeavor like this whether it's there or TV for people who see it and feel triggered by it be able to access services the way that services structure in this country if a young person or if anyone in fact sees this and are feeling distress they can they can go to their general practitioner and talk about that if it's a kind of an emergency situation that you can just go to A&E and just tell them how they feel --

There are lots of different websites as well search online for different kinds of supports the Samaritans that people can call a child line and Furion person but actually I think what it's really about is people not feeling ashamed to do that what I'm hoping this play would do is when the curtains come down at the end it's like breaking down stigmas and barriers people have issues that we carry with us and adults things that have happened when we were little and it's important to sometimes get help for that so I think it's important people should speak on and I'm hoping that a player this will help to destigmatize mental health issues and anyone watching this who do feel triggered by some of the content I would suggest they get help and support from the GP from A&E from online resources 

[Music]