By Anonymous COP Lawyer, 3rd March 2024 (with commentary from barrister Pippa Pudney – keep scrolling down)
In a recent blog post, Dr Ty Glover described his experiences working with anorexia nervosa patients, including ‘E’, whose prominent Court of Protection case in 2012 resulted in involuntary treatment being found to be in her best interests.
This interested me because I knew E.
In fact, around 2014, I developed anorexia nervosa and I was treated alongside E in an inpatient ward for nine months.
I am now a young lawyer practicing in the Court of Protection. I am writing under a pseudonym because I worry that, if other legal professionals learned that I suffered acute mental illness ten years ago, they might doubt my judgment or reliability. Concerns like these partly motivated the creation of a group called ‘Barristers with Lived Experience of Mental Illness’ (BLEMI) in which barristers can discuss their symptoms without real or perceived professional risk.
I don’t know whether my fear is well-founded. However, in the circumstances, the Open Justice Court of Protection Project has kindly permitted me to write anonymously, in a rare exception to the principle of transparency that pervades the Project.
In this blog, I first describe my time with E, then describe how E has since affected my professional life.
Reader discretion is advised, especially for those suffering from an eating disorder, because the following contains my recollections from treatment. I have withheld all information capable of rendering any person identifiable, and have not disclosed anything that E would not condone. Her story is not mine to tell, and some memories should remain ours alone.
My time with E
I was admitted onto an inpatient eating disorders ward in January 2014. I was admitted as a ‘voluntary patient’, meaning that I was not receiving treatment compulsorily under the Mental Health Act 1983. However, I was only so classified because I was told that, if I did not consent to treatment voluntarily, it would be arranged compulsorily.
I met a range of patients. They came from all over the United Kingdom. Almost all were women. Their ages ranged from, approximately, twenty to fifty years. Many had been receiving treatment for several years. I sometimes felt a meritocracy on the ward, whereby defying treatment was honourable, and compliance was repellent.
E never held those views. I cannot remember when exactly I first met her, but I suspect it was in the ‘ward round’ meeting the morning after my admission. These meetings were held every weekday morning, in a large room containing all available patients and staff, and were used to discuss recent ward news.
I quickly felt that E had a benign authority on the ward. E smiled and, with kind, glittering eyes, asked each patient how they were, despite no doubt suffering the intensely negative feelings that treatment triggered in everyone. E cared visibly, sincerely and indiscriminately.
E also interrupted other patients’ pathological behaviours. For example, during communal mealtimes, patients might save the most calorific food items until last, store them in their cheeks without swallowing and then spit them away when out of staff view. I remember, once, E noticed this was happening, ushered the patient aside and gently encouraged them to fight against their illness, both for their own sake and the sakes of their co-patients who were triggered by the behaviour.
I keenly benefitted from E’s influence. I was the youngest patient on the ward and it was my first admission. E spent a lot of time with me, encouraging me to make this first admission my last. E explained her own clinical history as an example of what my illness could lead to if I did not resist it.
I clearly remember, one evening, sitting with E in the patient lounge and watching the sun set. That evening, E told me about her Court of Protection case and the events preceding it. E did not seem angry about the outcome – she seemed solemnly resigned to it. When I went back to my bedroom that evening, I read the Court of Protection judgment about her. It was the first I ever read.
As time went on, E became something between a big sister and a mother. I played my musical instrument and E would come to listen. I watched television in my bedroom and E came to join. I stood by the ward’s locked windows to watch the aeroplanes and E helped me guess where they were going.
My circumstances changed in summer 2014. I sought premature discharge from the ward, and was instead detained there under section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983. This made me realise that unless I worked to recover my health, I would remain an inpatient for the foreseeable future. I spoke to E about this and, citing her own history, she agreed with my analysis.
By late summer 2014, an event happened that caused me to recover. I will not describe what it was here, save to say that I realised I could not tolerate inpatient life any longer, and certainly not indefinitely. The first person I told was my own mother, and the second person was E.
Afterward, I complied with treatment and restored the strength of my body. As I approached discharge, E told me to cut ties with all patients from the ward because – in her view – relapse would be more likely if I kept in touch with treatment-resistant anorexia nervosa patients.
After discharge, I tried many times to contact E, but she never replied. I don’t know why. Perhaps she was putting her advice above into practice. Perhaps she is not on that ward anymore.
How E has affected my professional life
After discharge, I returned to education. I retook A-Levels. I studied law because E’s Court of Protection case had interested me in it.
I did well, so continued studying law at undergraduate level. There, I took a module about medical law and ethics. E’s case was on my reading list. I sat in my professor’s study, and he wondered what E’s ‘autonomous’ wishes were (i.e. what E would want for her treatment, if we could silence the pathological desires of her anorexia nervosa). In this discussion I recited E’s judgment with emotion and detail. The professor looked at me strangely. I didn’t say any more. The ensuing exam went well.
I then undertook a Master’s degree in law. I studied human rights law, and again cited E’s case in my work, including the obligations that states have to save human life. Again, the ensuing exam went well. I then trained to become a barrister.
Today, I practice in the Court of Protection. This involves factual circumstances and best interests considerations analogous to E’s. I am sure that my inpatient admission and time with E determined my professional direction, as I was not interested in healthcare or law beforehand.
Perhaps more profoundly, my time with E affected how I interact with protected parties (Ps) in the Court of Protection today. E was a compassionate, tender and dignified person first, and an object of Court of Protection proceedings second. She had wishes, feelings and values that carried as much weight as yours or mine – even if, legally, they were overridden by other considerations.
With this knowledge, I pay attention to the wishes, feelings and values of the Ps I interact with day-to-day. This does not mean sugar-coating advice, especially when Ps’ wishes, feelings and values must, in the final analysis, be overridden. Rather, it means paying attention to P’s health circumstances, communicative preferences and other factors specific to them so that, when you are interacting with P, P feels like an informed, valued and dignified actor in their own life. Such treatment does not increase the cost of advice, and it is compatible with robustly discussing and determining the issues in a case.
Having described my time with E and how she has shaped my professional life, I close with a message to E, in case this blog finds its way to her.
If you are reading this, E, I hope you know who I am. I want you to see how you shaped my early adulthood. I promise to try my best to help people like us. I wonder whether we will meet again. If we do, perhaps we can watch the aeroplanes and guess where they are going.
The author is an anonymous Court of Protection lawyer.
Promoting Open Justice in the Court of Protection 
I’ve been thinking about this article a lot, so much so that I want to share my thoughts.
The article is an anonymised story from a Court of Protection barrister, explaining their experience as an inpatient receiving treatment in hospital for anorexia nervosa and how that experience led to their qualification as a barrister specialising in mental health and capacity work.
The author chose to remain anonymous for fear of judgement from others in the profession that suffering a mental illness may lead to questions about their reliability or judgement. Sadly, I think the author’s fears are right.
To those outside of, and some within, the profession, there is a stereotype that barristers ‘have it together’ and in order to be successful, we must ‘have it together’ 100% of the time. To show vulnerability in our own mental wellness may, after all, be seen to some as showing weakness.
I’ve struggled for a while with this – with wanting to share my own experience of an eating disorder and normalise the presence of eating disorders for grown and successful women – but have so far chosen not to for fear of judgement or questions around my own capability.
In writing this, I want to help continue what this anonymous barrister has started – to share who we are and what makes us good at what we do, even when that comes from challenges with our own mental wellness. I think really, it is only when more of us start to share our experiences and vulnerabilities that we will get rid of the preconception that to be a successful barrister, you cannot have experienced mental illness or that it may impact your professional abilities in some way. We don’t all have it together 100% of the time.
For me, my experience of an eating disorder taught me so much about myself. It helped me to understand my values, my resilience and my compassion. My treatment taught me mindfulness and to take care in how I speak to myself. Those are all things that now make me better at my job. To experience mental illness and work through it can give to anyone, in any profession, more than it takes away. I hope that more of us will be inclined to share; to work together to get rid of the notion that mental illness means you are not as capable; and that we will receive the experiences of others without judgement.
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