Take care of your mental health
Real Stories with Mary Lynch • Published 1 Dec 2011 09:30
0 Comments
On April Fool's Day 1988 I moved into our first real home with a five month old baby. It was a Friday, but as we had already moved about fifteen times I was not taking any chances; as they say: Saturday flitting is short sitting.
I moved alone as it was lambing season and my husband was staying on the farm.
So here I was with my baby girl, no income but with two flats which I had knocked into one and had intended to start a rest home for the elderly. As this was not coming to fruition I decided on another route.
At that time they were closing down the local mental hospital and boarding out patients so I approached the Western Health Board about this.
When I got the call asking, 'Would you take two patients?' I was delighted but asked,
'Can I meet them first?'
'Sure,' was the reply, 'and can we see where you intend to put them?'
'No problem,' I said and that day I went to meet the first two men who were to come and live with us.
I was very nervous going up the long driveway to the old hospital (now a prison) knowing that the return journey would change my life.
Up the concrete stairs I went with my heart in my mouth and the bravest face I could put on. I wanted to stay at home and rear my child and if this was how it was going to be done then so be it.
Walking through the door the first person I saw was Martin, about six foot six and built like a tank. My god, was my first thought, I will have to get a stronger bed. Behind him stood a wee man about five foot eight and thin as a whippet with an unlit pipe in his mouth.
I shook hands with both and the nurse in charge. Half an hour later I left with both men in tow!
And so began a completely new life for me and my extended family who reached eight at one time.
They went to day-care so, I had them up, fed and on a bus at 9.30 every morning just like school children. At the weekends they stayed at home with us.
From the moment I met Jimmy I knew he was a gentle soul and the only time he would raise his voice was when he ran out of tobacco for his pipe which never left his mouth. He had been incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for thirty five years before he came to us, schizophrenia was his crime. Martin was bi-polar (manic/depressive), in other words he had highs and lows. Twenty three years later the majority of the clients that passed through my house had received the same label which I always believed was drug induced. Everyday I would dispense them a cocktail of drugs which were being constantly changed. At a conference recently (Medicating Human Distress) the retired psychiatrist and author, Dr Ivor Browne, said in over fifty years of practice he only encountered three people that he would have considered bi-polar!
Jimmy lived with us for nearly eighteen years which meant nearly his entire life was controlled by the health board because society could not deal with him being different.
Other differences were unwanted members of families and unwed mothers even though no one ever asked who the fathers were!
We were a pilot scheme which continued as it was so successful in the area and involved about fifteen families. We took these people into our homes, families and hearts.
As my kids grew up they took part in caring for them.
When one of them died I had to leave his funeral early as Jarlath was playing in the under 16 county football final (him being captain and his father manager). When I arrived at half time they were losing by three points.
'Leo,' I said as I looked up to heaven, 'I know you are not long gone but will you give us a hand.' (He loved the game). My friend laughed at the idea of this but she cheered when Jarlath got a goal and two points in the next ten minutes and we won! I could imagine Leo smiling.
I always found it easy to relate to these people as they struggled to survive in a world that had abandoned them; most had very few visitors in all the time they stayed with me except one, whose sister, a nun, took care of him as if he were her child.
All were on medication and saw the psychiatrist and his team once a month. No one ever asked me my opinion (even though I frequently gave it) on anything even though I knew their every move as they spent 136 hours a week in my home! With the help of the local doctor I gave them all the support that I could and decreased their tablets whenever possible.
When Jimmy was with me seventeen years I got a call one day and the nurse asked,
'Are Jimmy's bags all packed?'
'No,' I answered shocked, 'is he going somewhere?'
'Yes, he's moving tomorrow.'
'Moving where?' I asked horrified.
'Into a geriatric home,' was the answer.
'Did it never occur to you to tell me of this move,' I asked?
'I thought you knew,' she replied.
'Well I didn't and I can only assume you did not tell him either as he would have told me; so he will be going nowhere until this is sorted.'
'I will call the psychiatrist,' she said.
'No need I will call him myself,' I replied angrily.
'Do you think we don't care?' she asked next, 'there's a bed available for him!'
'I don't know how much you care,' I replied, 'but I doubt if it is more than I do - you cannot take a human being out of his home of near eighteen years without even informing him.' And with that I slammed down the phone and called the psychiatrist.
'I would have thought you knew…. that you would have been told,' he said.
'Well I wasn't,' I replied, 'but much more to the point neither was Jimmy and he is not ready to go. Give me time and I will get him ready for the change.'
'Ok,' he replied.
Six months later another bed was available and I moved Jimmy myself.
In the late nineties I too was prescribed psychiatric drugs (when suffering from Post traumatic stress). I knew the problems these drugs were causing but was too vulnerable to look for any other help and was given no alternative. The first drug left me unable to sleep for a couple of nights which distressed me even more; I was then injected with 30mg of valium to calm me down and when even that didn't work I was then given more medication until my head started to spark like a fuse board exploding and I thought I would never recover.
We're told that anti-depressants are not addictive but after only a few months of Seroxat I could not cope when I stopped taking it; I was put back on it and then weaned myself off with no support but with lots of complications.
My friend was not so lucky, today as I look for help for her to discontinue medication for depression twenty two years after she was first prescribed it I found only three doctors in the Republic willing to help with this process, even though every GP can prescribe these drugs! The long-term medication has left her with major health problems and at night she just takes sleeping pills as she no longer knows what it is to feel tired and even these only give her a few hours rest!
The reason I write this column is to let you know that this system of care never consider the needs of the individual or where there anxiety stemmed from - we all became a case file written by a professional who took little time, asked few questions but dispensed lots of medication.
Today in the Republic people can still be locked up without their consent, treated with force and forcibly medicated and given ECG (electric shock treatment) when all else fails!
So take care of your mental health as the HSE advertisement (Health Service Executive) says but how do they expect one to do this in a country where medication is still the dominant response to trauma and even greater problems are created by the mismanagement of this distress.
I belong to an organization - Renew-Ireland.com who believe that the experience of psycho-spiritual distress is fundamentally a healing and renewal process and not an illness; there are self-help and mutual-help organizations you can join on both sides of the border and the best advice I was given when suffering was: don't ever allow yourself to get too hungry, too angry, too lonely or too tired!
Return to the main index, get more from this section or browse our Opinion archives.
