Andrew Aldred

Dark Days Andrew Aldred

I have been in Mental Health Services since 1985, when I had a huge mental breakdown after serving in the Falklands with the army. Since then my life has been something of a rollercoaster of mental illness until meeting my wife Jane seven years ago. I have been in and out of hospital from 1985 until 2009. I had an illness which I attributed to my father and resulted in me stabbing him in 1997 and going to the Edenfield Unit in Prestwich Hospital for 6 years. This is when I started to write poetry to keep myself sane and give me something to focus on. This book is a description of an ex-soldier's opinion of the army, prison, secure mental hospital, the home office and other aspects of life in his recovery journey from committing a crime of wounding with intent. It is not intended as a rant against a system he found very unsympathetic, but in its own way this is what it is because it could not be anything else.