Introductory Note
This is a satirical reimagining of a real Mental Health Act assessment, told through the lens of a theatre production. It exposes the contradictions and systemic absurdities in how mental health crises are handled, particularly the overreach of police involvement, the gatekeeping roles of mental health teams, and the reductive diagnostic practices that often overshadow individual dignity.
While darkly humorous, the story reflects serious concerns about how risk, trauma, and support needs are interpreted in practice – sometimes with damaging consequences. My hope is that this narrative opens space for critical reflection on the system we work within, and the people we serve.
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Prologue: The Fun House – Literal and Symbolic
A man asks for help – and gets a riot squad.
The system sprays him, pathologises his fridge, and paints him mad with a magnolia brush.
Meanwhile, the Crisis Team – supposedly the gatekeepers of hospital beds – slam the doors of home treatment shut.
What follows is a pantomime of psychiatric overreach, bureaucratic performance, and the AMHP’s refusal to say “he’s behind you” when he clearly wasn’t.
This is mental health care – but let’s make it theatre.
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Cast
Sonny
Crypto enthusiast, sunflower cultivator, and reluctant muralist, struggling to turn grief and chaos into something beautiful.
Professor Penfold
Retired psychiatrist. Nostalgic for the asylum era. Enjoys long walks through historical risk.
The Second Doctor
Seen but seldom heard. Mostly nods at the right moments.
The Gatekeeper of Crisis
Home treatment specialist turned detention evangelist.
Nine Police Officers
Tactical unit called to manage… bunting.
The AMHP (Narrator)
Frontline assessor and reluctant truth-teller. Holding the legal authority, a conscience, and the line.
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Act One: Welcome to the Fun House
(Spotlight on Sonny, painting a wall. Audience hears faint police sirens).
When it was shared that police had detained Sonny on a Section 136 after responding to reports of a squatter “hanging flags out of windows,” the AMHP suspected the assessment would be… interpretive.
Sonny – artist, crypto enthusiast, sunflower parent, and unofficial bus station reform consultant – had been staying at a friend’s townhouse. He described it as a kind of “therapy house”: a place for painting, cleaning, grieving. Rebalancing. Making meaning out of mess.
That was, until the therapy was rudely interrupted – by a flasher in the bus depot across the road.
He’d even daubed the words Fun House across the wall.
“I’m a kid from the ‘80s,” he said.
He explained that his friend had trusted him to redecorate as he pleased: “We’re both trauma babies. That’s why we bonded”.
Naturally, the appropriate response was to call in nine officers, pepper spray him, and detain him.
Cue dramatic gasp.
Audience murmurs: “Nine? For a decorator?”
Police brutality, he called it.
He was taken to the Place of Safety – a location that promises all three words and delivers none.
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Act Two: Crystal Balls & Fridge-Based Forensics
(Sonny is colouring in. The Narrator steps forward).
When the AMHP arrived, Sonny was calm. Colouring in.
At the top of the page, in neat capital letters, he had written:
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED: BAD JUDGEMENTS WERE MADE TODAY
He was bleeding, sore, and humiliated – but articulate. Poetic, even.
Professor Penfold, long retired but ever-present, perched like a waxwork from the golden age of paternalism. When I asked Sonny what he thought might help, Penfold winced like I’d asked him to set up a TikTok account.
Penfold offered him a hospital bed “for a rest”.
Sonny smiled:
“At the moment I’m like a pale orange… so I don’t mind stopping for a bit until I’m green”.
He spoke of the mugging, the house project, the flasher, housing stress.
And he clearly – unmistakably – wanted a break.
He was asking for support.
Voluntarily. Cooperatively. Reflectively.
Cue professional dismay.
Penfold declared him manic because he could “talk for England”.
The second doctor nodded solemnly. They both raised the possibility of drug-induced psychosis.
Drug screen? Spotless. Which of course made them more suspicious.
Enter the Gatekeeper of Crisis – a role once created to protect beds and promote home treatment – now rolling out the red carpet to the psych ward:
“He’s trying to justify everything”.
“It’s not true, what he’s saying”.
Sonny’s suggestion that the bus station needed relocating was seen not as civic commentary, but as grandiosity.
His fridge? Far too empty.
His crypto? Far too risky.
His head? Not bald enough.
His mural? Much too bold.
Painted “like a mad person,” apparently.
Not a single thing was just right.
Every detail – twisted into diagnosis.
The Gatekeeper of Crisis: “He cannot come in informally”.
The AMHP: “He just said he would”.
Penfold: “I only asked him to see what he’d say”.
The Gatekeeper: “He’ll get put on a Section 5(2). It’s not fair on the ward”.
The Second Doctor: “He said he won’t take meds”.
The AMHP: “You haven’t actually prescribed any”.
(The Gatekeeper rolls her eyes. Penfold looked at the AMHP like they’d insulted Freud’s ghost).
The AMHP respectfully pointed out that Sonny had been tear-gassed, cuffed, and detained just three hours earlier. That he was trying to make sense of his trauma – in real time – while being dissected by the fridge police.
Penfold: “You’re missing something”.
The AMHP: “Apparently a crystal ball”.
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His Offences?
(Narrator steps forward, shuffles papers).
Hung a few flags
Painted a wall
Reported a flasher
Grew sunflowers
Shaved his head
Had emotions
Wanted help
Audience whispers: “Monster”.
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Act Three: The Weaponised Pen
When fridge forensics and mural psychoanalysis failed to sway the AMHP, Penfold summoned… The Archive: a past admission.
The Sacred Scroll of Stabbing.
“He came in voluntarily last time… and threatened to stab someone with a pen”.
Ah yes. The pen.
The stationery of mass destruction.
Never mind that it was a single voluntary admission, years ago.
No charges. No injuries.
But the Bic Pen of Doom shall forever follow him.
To recap:
No violence
No psychosis
No risk
A man requesting support
and a pen anecdote from 2021.
Still, the chant rose:
“He needs to be properly assessed under the Mental Health Act”.
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Act Four: Diagnosis by Mural
Despite the pressure from two doctors and the Gatekeeper, the AMHP refused to make a Section 2 application.
The Gatekeeper’s parting shot?
“The police saw the real him”.
Yes. Sobbing on the pavement. Mid-pepper spray. Mid-handcuff.
“He’ll be bouncing around again”.
“He has a past”.
But what Sonny actually had was a clear plan:
Secure the property
Water the sunflowers
Go to Mum’s
Pack a bag
Allow happiness
They called it denial.
The AMHP called it resilience.
The irony? The very person meant to safeguard home treatment was force-feeding detention.
Beds are scarce. But the door to help was being slammed shut by its keeper.
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Act Five: The Sunflower Rebellion
So the AMHP did the unthinkable:
The next day they took Sonny home to collect his sunflower babies.
He looked after them on the ward.
He followed his plan.
He didn’t stab anyone.
(Not even with a pen).
No one got hurt – unless you count the egos of those who don’t like being told no.
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Final Note from the AMHP Who Said No
I stood my ground.
I did not make a Section 2 application.
Not because I don’t understand risk – but because I understand people.
Sonny wasn’t in crisis – the system was.
He was a man trying to find light in the mess.
He didn’t need detention.
He needed belief.
If murals are madness…
If metaphors mean mania…
If a shaved head and a fridge without hummus are now grounds for detention…
Then the Fun House isn’t where Sonny lives.
It’s where we work.
This was never a psychiatric assessment.
It was theatre.
His insight was framed as manipulation.
His past twisted into prophecy.
His hope treated as delusion.
He didn’t refuse help.
He requested dignity and choice.
And that, apparently, is the ultimate threat.
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Mad in the UK hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.