Let Me Introduce You To Danny

Danny will be 17 this year. He has severe learning disabilities, autism and depression. One of those at a time is enough for most people; Danny has to try and cope with all three together.

Danny can talk. I wouldn’t, however, say that he can hold a conversation. He can tell me that he wants a drink, or the toilet, or to go home. He can even tell me that he feels sad, or angry (a word usually followed by a marvelously creepy growl). But he has no idea how to answer questions that start with ‘why’, which makes it nigh-on impossible to identify the reasons for his sadness and anger. A lot of Danny’s speech is echolalic; he repeats things that he has heard without any understanding of what he is saying. Danny likes to repeat statements that he hears in his favourite Postman Pat and Noddy videos; a classic example is when he says, with no apparent reason but lots of feeling: “oh, what a predicament”. 

Danny has been living on my ward for almost a year. He came to us after his parents admitted that they could no longer cope with his behaviour. Certain members of my team are beginning to think that they cannot cope with it for much longer either. For a reason that we have not yet been able to fully identify, Danny wants to hurt himself. Left alone he will punch and slap himself on the face and head; I would guess that if we left him to it, he would carry on until he was unconscious. 

Of course we don’t leave him to it. We step in and hold his arms, sit him down in a restraint so that he can’t move. This is very effective at stopping him from hurting himself, however it leads straight to another problem. When we restrain Danny, he fights back. And he’s strong. I’ve sent staff off to hospital in an ambulance when Danny has really fought back. He kicks, he headbutts, he does everything he can to get us to let him go. And if we do, he goes straight back to hitting himself. This cycle can go on for hours each day. 

The saddest thing is that, on the moments when Danny is calm, he is a lovely boy, friendly and affectionate, but nobody really thinks of him that way. If I say his name, people groan. All they see is the shouting, self-harming, aggressive nightmare that he can be. 

I just hope that we can help him before the person that he really is gets lost forever, buried beneath endless misery.