Have you ever seen one of those beautiful clips on social media where someone finishes their cancer treatment and rings a bell at the hospital they’ve been treated at to mark it? Often nurses, doctors and families are present to mark the moment with them, and all those gathered clap and celebrate, lining the corridor to cheer them off as they leave for the last time. It’s such a wonderful tradition, and so moving to watch.

Whilst I love it, I can’t help but feel sad that we don’t do the same thing for those finishing treatment in other areas of health, particularly mental health. Mental health therapies are often such hard work, and so much of that hard work happens in secret, perhaps without the same level of support and understanding people might offer if it was a physical health condition.

This poem imagines what it might look like to offer the same kind of tradition for someone finishing a mental health therapy, or perhaps reaching a point of discharge from services. As they walk out of a ward, treatment centre or therapist’s office for the last time, what would I want it to look like for them? What would I want to say. The words are below the video if you need them.

I would ring the bell for you
I’d line the corridor with everyone that you adore
Oh how we’d roar
Rapturous applause
For everything that you’ve endured.

I would ring the bell for you.
We would celebrate every step that you have taken
Commemorate every chain breaking
Heart break fading, your life a remaking 

We’d clap for all that graft
Graft that will last that changed your path
A path from which you won’t turn back

We’d see evey piece of grief
When pain didn’t cease and there was no relief
No reprieve, nothing that eased or brought you peace

The days you conveyed you wouldn’t make it
The prayers you prayed that did nothing to shake it
But you stayed, remained and found a way.

We’d name the pain that still remains.
We’d say to take it day by day,
We’ll walk beside you come what may.

Then one day…

You will ring the bell for them.
You’ll line the corridor with everyone that they adore
Oh how you’ll roar 
Rapturous applause for everything that they’ve endured
You will ring the bell for them