Friendship Call Participant – Neil

Neil came through to RotherFed as a potential service user from Social Prescribing. Neil lives with severe Borderline Personality Disorder and OCD and lives on his own with no family support. An initial conversation was held with Neil to explain the service to him. He was amiable and spoke a lot about his interests in Japanese culture and fast cars, I built a fantastic rapport with him and he opened up about the distrust that he has in people and the feeling that no one listens to him or understands him. I made arrangements to call him again the following week, and he was so happy to receive my call, he said it was a pleasure being able to talk to someone who just listens or who speaks about the things that interest him. Neil was very down at the beginning of the call and after 45 minutes he had cheered up tremendously and I was privileged to be named as his friend and he also stated that this is something that he thought would never happen to him, to have a friendly chat with someone who does not judge him, or try to change him, but someone who just lets him be ‘normal’ for a change.