During my first month or so of psychiatry training, I was asked to review a patient with high blood pressure. On repeated measurements, her blood pressure remained high, and she became increasingly agitated. She kept trying to tell me about her wishes upon discharge, and how lonely she felt. I asked her to calm down and be quiet while I saw to her physical health. She only became more irate, and so did I. We were at odds.

Eventually, frustrated that she was not being listened to, she decided to act out her frustration by reaching forward, taking my glasses and twisting them in her hands. To both of our surprise, they did not snap or even crack, but moulded to whatever shape she bent them in, stubbornly refusing to break.

I made a very short-sighted mistake in interpersonal relationships that day, and indeed an error of judgement in medical practice. Had I listened to the patient before me, her blood pressure would almost certainly have come down naturally along with her frustration. By acting as she did however, she taught me a very valuable lesson.

My glasses mimicked human beings in demonstrating unexpected resilience, and taught me another lesson. I wish that I could say I always listen to my patients and meet them on their level but I think this is a journey and I am working towards this end. I am grateful to my patients for teaching me lessons such as this and I have my old glasses in display on my bedroom.

I entered my glasses alongside the poem into the PsychArt Conference Art Competition*  ‘Forgotten Movements’ at Queen Mary’s London  2025 –  I was astounded to have won and received wonderful compliments. I was awarded with a tomato plant which I am trying to encourage to flower and fruit!

This conference is run each year by fellow psychiatry trainees, some of whom I know as colleagues. They did a fantastic job of organising a day of lectures, seminars and workshops around the link between psychiatry and art, two disciplines which are linked together in fascinating ways. We learnt about the experience of motherhood or Matrescence from the author of a book on that name, Lucy Jones. Workshops and talks also involved how art is used as a therapy for inpatients in the NHS as well as by charities in warzones and following natural disasters to treat children. Embodiment and how the fragmented and even schizophrenic self, or lack of one, can be brought back together by inhabiting the body was also covered in a fascinating talk. The conference really stimulated the mind, gave the opportunity to meet many wonderfully creative and forward-thinking colleagues, and experience a plethora of works of art brought by their creators. Such experiences broaden the heart and mind and make me so glad to have picked psychiatry as a career.

*https://www.psychart.org.uk/