Reality of experience Vs ‘expert’ diagnosis.

This project (supported by a grant from the Heathrow Community Fund) involved creating an outdoor craft work that helped demonstrate and explain some of the mental and emotional distress felt by our Greencare group members.

Our members (living with complex needs, personality disorders and similar) decided to create a BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) scarecrow and started thinking of the concepts they wanted to represent. As part of this the group compiled a list of words that matched how they felt, and, by deciding on the importance of each we created a ‘word cloud’.

These words and feelings are often not understood by doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and other people - they may make judgements based on the criteria they are taught to use to diagnose.  The words from the medical diagnostic criteria for a psychiatric condition called “Borderline Personality Disorder” were used to create another word cloud – so giving us the reality of experience versus ‘expert’ diagnosis.

Our scarecrow (named Nat so neither male or female) expresses a horrible feeling of ’emptiness’ with a hole in the body made from a frame of chickenwire. The face is half-black and half-white to show how people suffering from mental and emotional disorders often change quickly between moods that are ‘black’, low, sad to ’white’, happy, moods. A large, battered heart hangs inside to represent how often people feel ‘broken-hearted’ and all parts of the scarecrow have meaning for the group who made it.

Placed alongside an information board Nat has attracted interest from many visitors – professionals, carers, services users and guests. Nat (in poster form) was exhibited at the BIGSPD (British and Irish Group for the Study of Personality Disorder) conference in 2018.

For more information about this project please contact Vanessa Jones:

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Tel: 07899793461