My friend Jim

"I live in it, it's more than f***ing believe in it" Dead Prez

This is the life when you come from the "endz". Yesterday, I heard a knock at my door early in the morning about 9 am. I was having a lie in so never went to the door. Later when I was leaving the house, I noticed that there was a Bible and a Quran on my window sill. I figured that one of my many troubled friends may have been having an episode. Today, one of my friends Jim turned up; he had left the books there for me. He is a 39 year old man of Guyanese parentage, he comes from a family 5. He has been in and out of prison from the age of 15. His older brother was in prison for murder for 25 years and his life had been particularly chaotic. His twin brother is a recovering crack addict on methadone. He is not able to read and write functionally. He has been in mental health institution's 13 times since 1996. His troubled mental health evolved from him being imprisoned as a young man. Why did the prison not rehabilitate him and identify that he could not read and write? Why was this not recognised by the school? Where were the elite members of the community to help him? Today he told me that he wanted to enrol to learn sign language and maths because he could not read. I called Lambeth college and he is going to go to enrol tomorrow. The thing is I can see that he is not well, he was speaking about him being the black Jesus. Do you know that black Jesus thing? People of African descent on the "endz" get ill and start calling themselves black Jesus, I have seen a trend with it. He was speaking about devils being on him and how he wanted me to pray for him? Sometime he speaks to someone else not me... He is not the first person I have witnessed this happen to. We need more availability of talk therapies for early intervention like the Lib Dem's have set out; a prison system that rehabilitate's rather than further entrenching criminality; we need more research finance from national government to study mental health in deprived communities like the one in South London my friend Jim grew up in.