The Devil in the mirror

As a kid growing up in Scotland in the 1950s, Dennis O’Donnell was aware of ‘loonies’, and the men in white coats who were supposed to take them away. Then, as a student, he became one of the men in white coats. At first, he thought he’d find himself in a world of Beckettian absurdity and insight. But it was grim. One man believed he was the King of Egypt. Another man smoked rolled-up bits of lavatory paper. One poor soul spent his time waiting for a visit from his daughter, who never came. When a patient died, O’Donnell was on hand to carry out official procedure: ‘Orifices have to be plugged — need I say more?’ He went back to university, where he was studying English literature.

Thirty years later, O’Donnell became a psychiatric orderly again. This time, the job lasted seven years. Again, he found himself in a grim world of people whose thought processes had become disordered.