Jemma Hawkins, 29, of the UK has been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. As part of the UK health system she has been receiving regular, sometimes daily visits from mental health care visitors to help her with her condition.
However, on one of the visits the health care visitor told her that she should remove her pagan religious items from plain view and put them away in the bedroom so as not to affect Jemma’s 10 year old son. Jemma has been a practicing pagan for six of the 10 years of her son’s life, ‘He thinks it’s cool and he’s always asking questions about it, but I’ve always stressed to him that just because mum does it, he doesn’t have to as well.’
The comments from the health care visitor came during a conversation in which Mrs. Hawkins was relating that she had not been doing very well as of late with her condition. She said: ‘The lady was commenting on my bits and bobs and she said I ought to take them down because she thought it was detrimental to my son’s well-being.
‘Before that we had been talking about how I had been doing and I wasn’t feeling too good, so that really knocked me for six.
‘I was really angry because Wicca is a recognized religion.
‘You wouldn’t go into a Muslim’s home and ask them to take down their religious items would you?’
When the Hampshire Partnership NHS Trust Jamie Stevenson was contacted for comment he said the health visitor had been referring to some collectable dolls not connected to religious beliefs, known as Living Dead dolls, which Mrs. Hawkins had on display. He went on to say, ‘When the support worker went around there and she saw these dolls and she thought they were a bit macabre.’ Mr. Stevenson then countered, ‘We would never give advice on parenting unless they were doing something extremely wrong, which isn’t the case here. With a mental health patient like Mrs. Hawkins we are trying to build a rapport and look after her needs, not to go in and throw our weight around.’ There was however no comment on if the health visitor had been given instruction or advised to change their behavior.
