Local councillors in Norfolk are to be given special ‘panic cards’ to hold up allowing them to leave meetings if the psychological trauma induced by having to sit through rambunctious, high stakes political debate about chancel repair schedules, anti-dog fouling initiatives, and public toilet opening times during weekends and bank holidays, becomes too overwhelming (Eastern Daily, GB News, Metro, Telegraph).
Liberal Democrat-run Wymondham town council introduced the initiative following claims by 25 year-old Green councillor Joe Barratt that having to listen to fellow councillor Tony Holden deliver some stinging criticisms of the Town Council’s recent performance sparked a “catastrophic psychiatric emergency”.
At a council meeting in February, Conservative Councillor Mr Holden rose to give a speech announcing his retirement after nearly a decade of public service.
“For nine years I have been a member of this council,” he began, “and although I have not seen eye to eye with fellow councillors, I think I have served the people of Wymondham with energy, enthusiasm and to the best of my ability.
“But I am also saddened,” he said, getting down to brass tacks, “saddened to see this administration allow itself to be so willingly led by the clerk. You have achieved nothing.”
Although Mr Barrett was not one of the targets of Mr Holden’s accusations, he claims these words caused him to have a “serious dissociative episode”, and that the unexpected criticisms had been “catastrophic” for him. The situation had been worsened, Mr Barrett said, because there was a lack of a “perceived means of escape” from the room he’d just entered via an aperture of some sort, like an open window, say, or maybe even a door.
Mr Barrett, who says he has suffered from PTSD since he was a teenager, proposed the new panic card system as a means to preserve the “psychological safety” of councillors. Thanks to the support of the Mayor and chair of Wymondham Town Council Suzanne Nuri-Nixon, who “applauded” Mr Barrett “for being so honest”, the scheme has been unanimously approved by fellow members.
“I too have been diagnosed with severe traumatic PTSD as well as MS,” announced fellow Councillor David Roberts, who supported the scheme. “This is not just about mental health but equality,” he added.
Ms Nuri-Nixon also commended the initiative, claiming it was “just a way of showing a bit of respect, and will make us more inclusive”.
Fresh from this success, Mr Barrett now wants councillors suffering mental health crises during meetings to be directed to a ‘safe space’ outside the meeting, where they will be provided with a glass of water and advice on “grounding techniques”, including breathing exercises.
“Some may call me a snowflake,” he said, with a prescience remarkable for a politician of such tender years, “but these things are important for disabled people to be able to participate in democracy.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the new measure has been criticised, including by Mr Holden himself, who continued to chip away at his erstwhile colleagues’ psychiatric stability, describing them as “a bit wet” and “fragile”, and making the point that democracy would suffer as a result of the changes.
“If you can’t stand the heat, you need to get out of the kitchen,” he added, callously assuming that the kitchen in question would have a ‘perceived means of escape’.
Wymondham Town Council’s ‘panic card’ system is the latest example of ‘concept creep’ in contemporary western life, whereby terms drawn from the lexicon of clinical psychology are broadened to encompass – and thereby subtly reconfigure – everyday experiences of argument, dissent and disagreement.
Forms of speech that challenge fashionable orthodoxy and that would once have been viewed as part and parcel of life in a pluralist liberal democracy are in this way pathologised as ‘harmful’, ‘triggering’, ‘traumatic’, and therefore absolve the person challenged from having to defend their position.
Back in January, for instance, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggested that trans staff may not feel “safe” in the workplace, after its methodology for counting transgender people in the census was questioned by the UK’s statistics regulator (as well as several leading academics) because it may have overestimated the number of trans people due to a poorly worded question.
In a letter to all staff, titled “a message of support for colleagues in the LGBTQ+ community”, senior leaders began by addressing “recent media coverage of our statistics around sexual orientation and gender identity”.
“Over the past few weeks,” the message said, “we have been speaking with trans colleagues and those in the wider LGBTQ+ community about the impact this has had on their wellbeing.
“In light of this, we want to reaffirm our commitment to providing an inclusive workplace in the ONS where everyone can feel safe and can bring their full self to work.”
The message went on to signpost employees to services if they had been “impacted” by the situation, before adding: “Please support colleagues during this time and recognise that we are all impacted by this situation in different ways.”
An ONS insider said that the message was wrongheaded. “Instead of accepting the legitimacy of the review, or indeed the right of scientists to talk about biological sex, the message appears to reframe it as an attack on the safety of trans people within the ONS,” they said.
A similar tactic was adopted last year by Lloyds Bank, when Human Resources Director Sarah Underhill [pronouns: She/Her] offered free counselling to any of the organisation’s 30,000 staff who had been psychologically ‘triggered’ by “the rhetoric coming from the Conservative Party conference in Manchester, targeting the trans and non-binary community”.
The conference saw figures like Kemi Badenoch, Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman defend women’s sex-based rights, and criticise the way some trans activists were bullying people into agreeing with their views.
“I am aware of the brilliant work undertaken in the last few days by our Trans Working Group and their allies, to mobilise support, offering safe spaces for colleagues affected to talk, to vent and to find allyship and assurance,” Ms Underhill said, before adding that “as a community, we come together to offer allyship and support to anyone affected”.
Ms Underhill reassured employees that “[s]upport is also available via our LGBTQ Mental Health Advocates and through the private medical healthcare available via BUPA”, while colleagues could “also contact Mind Out, our LGBTQ mental health partners”.
