Your memories: Friendly approach helped mentally ill cope with life

FOR the last 60 years, Edinburgh council's Northumberland Street hostel has been providing much needed respite for people with mental health difficulties.

This month its services are moving to a new facility in Oxgangs, marking the end of an era for the many staff and patients who have passed through the hostel in the last six decades.

These include former manager Mary Cassidy, 67, who retired nine years ago after almost 30 years service.

When Mary, who now lives in The Jewel, first stepped through the doors as a domestic cleaner in 1972, she had no idea she would go on to play a central role in helping the mentally ill residents.

She says: "It was just a wee part-time job to bring in some extra money.

But over the years I started getting more involved. I was promoted to housekeeper, and then third officer and by the time I left I was a manager.

"Along the way I took courses on how to care for mentally ill people, such as how depression or schizophrenia affects people.

"The main thing I learned was that mentally ill people are just like anyone else, and I always treated them as such.

People with illnesses such as schizophrenia don't take well to authority, but in Northumberland Street there were no authoritarian figures. Everyone there was a friend."

Mary saw the hostel change a lot in her 30-year career.

Northumberland Street started out as a hostel dealing almost exclusively with depressed males, but in later years she was dealing with both sexes and a range of mental illnesses.

Mary adds: "I was assaulted a few times. On one occasion I was chatting away quite happily with a girl, and the next minute she went straight for my throat.

"Most of the more serious incidents happened when people came off their medication.

But we could normally spot it early because they would gradually become more aggressive, and we could deal with it before it got out of control.

"We had many successes. One girl sticks in my mind who was very low and convinced she would never get back on her feet. Within about six months she was taking courses, and got a Red Cross qualification, and the last I heard from her she was married and working as a secretary."