Michelle Arthur's garden serves as a tribute to her son, Liam, who struggled with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) leading to his tragic passing. Faced with grief after losing his grandfather, Liam's behavior changed drastically. He became increasingly reclusive, developed severe OCD symptoms, and ultimately faced challenges that his mother believes could have been alleviated with proper treatment. The existing mental health criteria, she argues, often exclude vulnerable individuals like Liam, thereby failing to provide necessary support in critical situations.
Michelle believes that if he had been referred for specialist inpatient treatment for his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), he would still be here today. "The criteria that's set excludes the most vulnerable and disabled patients that are crippled by their OCD. They're the ones that need the help the most but they're the ones that fall through the net," she says.
Struggling with grief after the loss of his grandad, Liam dropped out of university and came home, to Sutton in south London, in March 2017. Michelle started to notice small changes in his behaviour, such as hoovering the house more frequently and rearranging items in the supermarket when they went shopping.
Liam also began to become more secluded, avoiding friends and restricting his eating by going without food for four or five days in repeated cycles. "He confessed to me that he felt he was infected and he had to carry out certain rituals and if he didn't carry out the rituals, his family would die or he would die."
Almost all the plants Michelle Arthur shows me in her garden when we first meet were chosen by her son, Liam: a talented gymnast who won several championships in his teens and loved learning about the natural world.
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