Psychiatric nurse’s story attracts media interest
After spending a career caring for some of the most violent criminals in Britain at the notorious Broadmoor Hospital, one might be inclined to think of putting one’s feet up. Not Paul Deacon, as he told
WE first spoke to Paul about his career as a nurse working with some of the most infamous criminally insane people in Britain back in 2019.
While he never said which serial killers, dangerous gangsters and other murderers he looked after during his stint at Broadmoor, the Berkshire high security hospital for the criminally insane is where East End gangster Ronnie Kray stayed during the last years of his life. It’s also been the home of dangerous armed robber Charles Bronson and serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, better known as the Yorkshire Ripper.
Now 66, Paul, from Bodmin, spent 42 years working in mental health. Speaking about his choice of career, he told us that his years on wards at Broadmoor and the former psychiatric St Lawrence’s Hospital in Bodmin were reason for hope rather than despair – a belief he still holds today.
The book he wrote about his career – Walls and Bridges, Bodmin to Broadmoor, A Journey Working In Mental Health – has been selling well and has attracted interest from documentary makers, keen to get a glimpse of what working with the criminally insane is like.
“It’s been a busy time over the last few years,” Paul said. “But I have to say that is the way I like it. On the mental health side, I have done a few podcasts, and kept very much in the loop.
“I was taken back when Channel 5 contacted me to say they were doing a four-episode documentary with staff that had worked at Broadmoor over the years, and wanted me to participate. I jumped at this opportunity and signed up.
“This was quite an experience and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. I spent five hours being filmed. I was knackered at the end of it. I have been informed that all the editing has been done. I should hear soon when it goes out for viewing. The title hasn’t been given to me yet, but it will be ‘Broadmoor something ...’”
As well as sharing his experience with TV documentary makers, Paul became an internet sensation when he was interviewed for a podcast by Ladbible.
He said: “Again, this was interesting. They wanted to hear about my journey. Here was me thinking I would receive a few hundred views. It clocked 2.5 million views with 50,000 likes and thousands of comments.” The video, available on YouTube, currently has more than 2.8m views.
In the Ladbible interview, Paul recalled how on his first week on the job as a young mental health nurse he was asked to go and check on a patient, only to have that patient try to strangle him. He told the interviewer: “It was quite harrowing to be honest. I remember the first week, my charge nurse said ‘can you go up to the toilets there, and check on that patient?’
“I went up and the next minute he had me by the neck and was trying
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Here was me thinking I would receive a few hundred views. It clocked 2.5 million views with 50,000 likes and thousands of comments
Olivier Vergnault
to strangle me. It was fight or flight. It really shook me up. I came out and I thought ‘one thing here, don’t become complacent.’”
He said that the type of mental illnesses the patients he dealt with at St Lawrence’s in Bodmin and Broadmoor ranged from schizophrenia, manic depression, depression, OCD, anxiety or suicidal ideation. Paul said there was a lot of violence, not every day, of course, but recurrent, especially when so many mentally ill patients lived under one roof together and their illnesses conflicted.
He recalled: “One patient I had a good therapeutic relationship with was staring at me. I thought there is something going on. So I asked him ‘are you OK?’ and he said to me ‘the voices are telling me to kill you’ and it was so real to him. You have to be a certain person to go into nursing.”
In the 18-minute long interview, Paul recalled how he underwent restraint, shield and even hostage situation training while working at Broadmoor. He said one of the worst things he witnessed there was patients cutting their own throats. He said: “That’s quite something. You deal with it but it is something especially when they are young. It makes you feel how lucky you are when you leave a shift.”
He added: “What I learned through my career with hangings, is that if they’re going to do it, they’ll do it. They really will. You feel a bit of guilt really. All the time, all the input we’ve given that person. You feel like you’ve let them down.”
After a long career, Paul decided it was time to do something else. He has spent his retirement writing about his experience and also supporting mental health work and trying to make people understand it better. He said that on occasion, when visiting units to support colleagues, he still misses the job “as it takes you all back being on the unit”.
He said that, on occasions, patients he has never met before have come up to him to chat. He said: “You never lose those skills. You can have that rapport right away. You can converse and that’s the biggest skill in nursing, is getting through to somebody. I always see it as a privilege to work somewhere like that. An absolute privilege.
“If you can change somebody a little like that each day, that’s good enough for me. That’s why I was in the job.”
Paul said the Ladbible interview has stirred other interest and there might be opportunities to talk about mental health and nursing at Broadmoor when he takes part in another documentary.
He said: “Last month I was contacted by the founder of True Crime. We set up an hour’s Skype meeting to discuss what they wanted. This turned out to be an hour and a half talking about high secure hospitals in the UK. They’re also looking to film a documentary on secure settings in mental health in the country and then they’ll do one in New York and compare the two. I have been invited on board and filming will start at the end of April.”
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If you can change somebody a little like that each day, that’s good enough for me. That’s why I was in the job