“Fun House”: A Section 136 Pantomime in Five Acts
(Featuring Nine Police Officers, a Bit of Pepper Spray, and the Crisis Team’s Crystal Ball)
By Rebecca Waterworth
This is a satirical reimagining of a real Mental Health Act assessment,staged as theatre because, at times, that is precisely what it resembles.
Behind the humour sits something less entertaining: the contradictions, distortions, and quiet harms embedded in crisis responses where risk can be overstated, dignity understated, and support withheld at the very moment it is requested.
My hope is that this narrative opens space for critical reflection on the system we work within, and the people we serve.
Details have been changed to protect Sonny’s identity, but the characters are real.
The dynamics are real.
It’s only the staging that has been exaggerated.
(Slightly.)
Prologue: The Fun House
A man asks for help.
The system sends a riot squad.
He is pepper-sprayed, detained, and pathologised based on his wall art and fridge contents.
Meanwhile, the Crisis Team - supposedly the gatekeepers of hospital beds - slam the doors of home treatment shut.
What follows is a pantomime of psychiatric overreach.
A five-act performance featuring:
- diagnostic improvisation,
- risk by hindsight,
- and one AMHP refusing to shout “he’s behind you” when he quite clearly isn’t.
Welcome to the Fun House. Please take your seats.
Cast
Sonny
Crypto enthusiast, sunflower cultivator, and reluctant muralist, struggling to turn grief and chaos into something beautiful.
Professor Penfold
Retired psychiatrist. Nostalgic for the asylum era. Enjoys long walks through historical risk.
The Second Doctor
Seen. Seldom heard. Primarily nods.
The Gatekeeper of Crisis
Home treatment specialist turned detention evangelist.
Nine Police Officers
Tactical unit called to manage… bunting.
The Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) (Narrator)
Responsible for considering everything - while everyone else has already decided. Holding legal authority, a conscience and the line.
Act One: Welcome to the Fun House
(Spotlight on Sonny, painting a wall. Faint police sirens in the background).
When it was shared that Sonny had been detained under Section 136 after police responded to reports of a squatter “hanging flags out of windows” - the AMHP suspected the assessment would be... interpretive.
Sonny - artist, crypto enthusiast, sunflower parent, and part-time critic of local infrastructure - had been staying at a friend’s townhouse.
He described it as a kind of “therapy house”: a place for painting, cleaning, grieving. Rebalancing.
“Making meaning out of mess”, he said.
Sonny had painted the words FUN HOUSE across the wall.
“I’m a kid from the ‘80s”, he said.
He explained that his friend had given him full creative freedom: “We’re both trauma babies. That’s why we bonded”.
The therapy, however, was rudely interrupted.
By a flasher.
Yes – a flasher.
Across the road.
At the bus depot.
Sonny did what he understood to be his civic duty and rang the police.
(Enter Nine Police Officers, stage left, armed with pepper spray and a deep misunderstanding of proportionality).
Little did he know that the cavalry were responding to a different concern entirely.
Sonny later described the experience as “police brutality”.
He was transported to a “Place of Safety” – in name, if not in practice.
Act Two: Crystal Balls & Fridge-Based Forensics
(Sonny is colouring in. The AMHP observes).
By the time the AMHP arrived, Sonny was calm.
He was colouring in.
At the top of the page, written in neat capital letters:
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED: BAD JUDGEMENTS WERE MADE TODAY
He was bleeding, sore, and humiliated.
But also articulate. Poetic, even.
Professor Penfold, long retired but ever-present, perched like a waxwork from the golden age of paternalism. When the AMHP asked Sonny what he thought might help, Penfold winced like he had been asked to set up a TikTok account.
Penfold offered Sonny a hospital bed “for a rest”.
Sonny smiled in contemplation:
“At the moment I’m like a pale orange… so I don’t mind stopping for a bit until I’m green”.
He spoke about being mugged. The house project. The flasher. Housing stress.
And he clearly, unmistakably, wanted a break.
He was asking for support.
Voluntarily. Cooperatively. Reflectively.
(Cue professional dismay.)
Penfold diagnosed mania.
Primary symptom: “talking for England”.
The second doctor nodded, as was tradition, before unveiling their diagnostic masterpiece: a follicular observation about Sonny’s “poorly shaved head”, referring solemnly to the few rebellious tufts.
Drug-induced psychosis was suggested.
Drug screen? Spotless. Which of course made them more suspicious.
(Enter the Gatekeeper of Crisis.)
Once tasked with preventing unnecessary admissions, now rolling out the red carpet to the psych ward:
“He’s trying to justify everything”.
“It’s not true, what he’s saying”.
Sonny’s views on relocating the bus station were reclassified as grandiosity.
His fridge? Far too empty.
His crypto? Far too risky.
His head? Not bald enough.
His mural? Much too bold.
Painted “like a mad person”, apparently.
Not a single thing was just right.
Every detail - twisted into diagnosis.
The Gatekeeper: “He cannot come in informally”.
The AMHP: “He has just said he will”.
Penfold: “I only asked him to see what he’d say”.
The Gatekeeper: “He’ll end up on a Section 5(2). It’s not fair on the ward.”
The Second Doctor: “He said he won’t take medication”.
The AMHP: “You haven’t prescribed any”.
(A pause. The Gatekeeper rolls their eyes. Penfold looks at the AMHP like they’d insulted Freud’s ghost).
The AMHP respectfully pointed out that Sonny had been tear-gassed, cuffed, and detained just three hours earlier. That he was trying to make sense of his trauma - in real time - all while being dissected by the fridge police.
Penfold remained unconvinced: “You’re missing something”.
The AMHP: “Apparently a crystal ball”.
His Offences?
(Narrator steps forward, shuffles papers).
- Hung a few flags
- Painted a wall
- Reported a flasher
- Grew sunflowers
- Shaved his head
- Had emotions
- Asked for help
(Silence.)
Act Three: The Weaponised Pen
(The light drops. A desk lamp clicks on. Everything else recedes.)
When fridge forensics and mural psychoanalysis failed to sway the AMHP, Penfold summoned…
(A file slides into the light.)
The Archive.
A past admission.
Penfold clutches his pearls.
“He came in voluntarily last time… and threatened to stab someone… with a pen”.
(Silence.)
Ah yes.
The pen.
The stationery of mass destruction.
Never mind that it was a single voluntary admission.
Years ago.
No charges. No injuries.
But the Bic Pen of Doom shall forever follow him.
To recap:
- No violence
- No psychosis
- No immediate risk
- A man requesting support
…Oh and a pen anecdote from 2021.
(The file closes. Definitive.)
Still, the chants rose:
“He needs to be properly assessed in hospital under the Mental Health Act”.
Act Four: Diagnosis By Mural
Despite sustained pressure, the AMHP refused to make a Section 2 application.
The Gatekeeper’s parting shot?
“The police saw the real him”.
Yes. Sobbing on the pavement. Mid-pepper spray. Mid-handcuff.
“He’ll be bouncing around again”.
“He’ll escalate”.
“He has a past”.
But what Sonny actually had, was a clear plan that he had written down:
- Secure the property
- Water the sunflowers
- Go to Mum’s
- Pack a bag
- Allow happiness
They called it denial.
The AMHP called it resilience.
The irony is difficult to ignore.
The service designed to prevent admission is advocating for it.
The person requesting help is being refused it.
Beds are notoriously scarce. But the door to help was being slammed shut by its keeper.
Act Five: The Sunflower Rebellion
The following day, the AMHP does something unexpected.
They take Sonny home.
He collects his sunflower babies.
He brings them to the ward.
He follows his plan.
He does not stab anyone.
(Not even with a pen.)
No one got hurt.
Unless you count the egos of those who don’t like being told no.
Final Note From The AMHP Who Said No
The AMHP did not make the application because the Mental Health Act does not exist to manage professional anxiety or convenience.
Section 13 requires the AMHP to consider all the circumstances - the person’s wishes, alternatives to detention, and the least‑restrictive option, not just the noisiest opinions in the room.
Sonny was not the crisis.
The system was.
He was a man trying to find light in his distress.
His insight was framed as manipulation.
His past twisted into prophecy.
His hope treated as delusion.
He didn’t refuse help. He requested dignity and choice.
And that, apparently, is the ultimate threat.
If murals are madness…
If metaphors are mania…
If a shaved head and a fridge without hummus are now grounds for detention…
Then the Fun House is not where Sonny lives.
It’s where we work.
(Lights shift. The Fun House sign remains.)