Bessie, the psychiatrist who finds peace of mind at Stepney City Farm - Londoner #65

Описание: Bessie moved to London from Adelaide about 20 years ago, and began working in social work with rough sleepers. She is now a psychiatrist and is also a Trustee on the board at Stepney City farm. She can see parallels between her work in psychiatry and life on the farm, as animals can have a really positive effect on people's mental wellbeing - especially in bustling cities like London.

1000 LONDONERS

This film is part of 1000 Londoners, a five-year digital project which aims to create a digital portrait of a city through 1000 of the people who identify themselves with it. The profile contains a 3 minute film that gives an insight into the life of the Londoner, as well as their personal photos of London and some answers to crucial questions about their views on London life. Over the course of the project we aim to reveal as many facets of the capital as possible, seeing city life from 1000 points of view.

www.1000londoners.com
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Twitter: @1000_londoners

1000 Londoners is produced by South London based film production company and social enterprise, Chocolate Films. The filmmakers from Chocolate Films will be both producing the films and providing opportunities to young people and community groups to make their own short documentaries, which will contribute to the 1000 films. Visit www.chocolatefilms.com

Transcript:

The farm is about a million different things. I like to come here and I just like to walk around it and think. I wander about, I look at things, I might pick up, vaguely tidy up in much the same way as I should do in my own home. I contemplate things, I talk to people. My children say I do far too much chatting. They said “Mum, you do far too much chatting”. So it’s a place that people come to feel happy. A place where, I certainly come here and feel happy. I walk in the front gate and I realise that I relax. I’m a mother of two locally to Stepney City Farm. I’m also a trustee and in my day job I’m a psychiatrist. There’s an overlap - sometimes when I’m at work and I’m with people that I’m supposed to be treating with medication and so forth, I say to them “have you got a local city farm” actually. Because there are an awful lot of people out there who like animals and don’t get any exposure to them and I think it probably helps with mental health. It takes up so much of my time that I sometimes think that I’m mad, why on earth am I here? Someone said to me is it because you miss the outdoors of Australia and I expect that’s true somewhere because I remember when I first got here I realised I very rarely had any dirt under my feet, you know. Look at their faces. I love how when sheep make their noises they sound like a human kind of trying to be a sheep. And they all sound slightly different. I think they sound like a bad human impersonation of a sheep noise. They’re very funny. Being on the farm exposed me to all those people that I wouldn’t normally meet and it’s taught me about all these different aspects of life. What I’ve learnt here is that there are some people who prefer or feel easier in their relationships with animals to relationships they have with other humans. And I’ve developed an increasing respect for that. Whether that applies to me, I’m not entirely sure. I think it’s more the plants.