Traumas of forming: The introduction of Community Meetings in the dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD) environment

Abstract

This paper presents a perspective on the staff and patient experiences of the introduction of Community Meetings into the Rampton Hospital DSPD Peaks Unit, a high-secure setting designed to accommodate "some of the most dangerous people in society" (Home Office, 2004); nevertheless a client group who have often lived through deeply traumatic experiences in childhood and young adulthood. The bi-weekly Ward Community Meetings, which are intended to integrate aspects of Therapeutic Community living into the highly restricted, institutionalised life of the DSPD Unit, were introduced in late 2004 by Claire Moore, Principal Forensic Psychologist in the Peaks. Since then, they have become an accepted feature of life on the Unit but one which nevertheless seems to induce strong feelings in patients and staff at all levels, making the maintenance of a therapeutic environment an ongoing process of negotiation and the epicentre of institutional conflict. In this paper, Claire reflects on her personal experience of introducing, implementing and defending the Meetings - as well as the strong therapeutic ethos behind them - and, based on his ethnographic fieldwork in the Peaks, Mark Freestone presents a sociological contextualisation of this therapeutic ideal within a 'totally' institutionalised environment, with particular attention to the maintenance of a particular power/knowledge apparatus within the Unit. © The Authors.