The Road to Joyce Green Hospital

Schizophrenia can established itself insidiously, my childhood was considered normal and on leaving Dartford Grammar School I quickly found work in a local pharmaceutical company. Shortly after my nineteenth birthday I began attaching meaning to random events, for example people sitting in parked cars were obviously spying on me, At first these paranoid thoughts could be contained within my mind and apart from becoming slightly withdrawn daily life continued. As time passed my job became increasingly difficult to maintain and impossible after the onset of auditory hallucinations. My family attributed my increasingly strange behavior on drugs and called a Doctor who prescribed Stelazine and arranged an appointment with a psychiatrist. During the psychiatrists consultation a ultimatum was reached either I was to be a voluntary patient of Orchard House situated within Joyce Green Hospital or I could be sectioned under the mental heath act and forced to attend the Stone House Hospital naturally I chose the voluntary option. When the psychiatrist had concluded the interview I was escorted home by my father and sister by this time anxiety levels and auditory hallucinations were extreme, family & neighbours blocked any possible escape routes from the house. Several hours passed and there was an phone call and I was hustled in a car and driven to Ward 19 of Joyce green hospital where I was bundled through a set of blue turquoise wooden doors up couple flights of stairs through another set of doors and left into a corridor then right into a room and sat down in front of a desk facing a consultant psychiatrist, several other members of staff entered the room and proceeded to discuss my condition with my family. Some time passed and I escorted out of the interview room continued down the corridor where you arrived in a small ward with beds on either side mine was the first left next to the window

Pictured above is Stone House Hospital Dartford built in 1866 its original name was The City of London Asylum

The "One Way" road sign which appears to be pointing towards the entrance may concern some patients