Writing about mental illness, is not easy, it is an emotional subject and really just about the last taboo. It is not something people talk about, or even acknowledge in any serious way, but one out of every 4 of us will suffer mental illness during our lives, many more of us will be directly, and devastatingly affected by mental illness.
So, what is mental illness? It is just that, an illness, only the part of the body affected is the brain. With most other illnesses the patient shows outward symptoms, a heart attack, cancer, both normally have obvious outward signs, whether in the look of a patient or the fact that they lose weight, cant walk far… with an injury there are the obvious signs, the plaster, the sling, the crutch… an observer can identify there is a problem, and has an understanding of what it means.
If you are a carer for someone with a physical illness you get sympathy, and rightly so, because when you are a carer it is a full time job, it doesn’t stop at 5:00 pm. If you care for a patient with a mental illness, nobody knows, the signs are not obvious, unless they are beyond the extreme edge of the illness.
Once someone identifies a person as mentally ill, they can become very defensive, it looks aggressive, because they don’t understand, they think the ill person is a little strange, or a lot strange, they don’t see it as an illness.
I am a great admirer of the work done in the care of cancer patients, in cardiac work, and the ease with which broken bones can now be mended, it is magnificent work, carried out by gifted and dedicated experts. We see the evidence so often in our magazines and papers, on our tv screens, on a advertising boards. There are massive organisations sponsoring major events to raise money for sufferers, and for the scientists who achieve the great break-throughs in treatment. We’ve all seen them.
How often do we see the same sort of campaigns for the mentally ill? How often do we hear of major break-throughs in treatment.
In fact, how often does anyone talk about mental illness. We don’t know about it. We all know people who have had, or got, cancer, who have suffered heart attacks. Very few of us know anyone with mental illness. Is this true? One in Four of us suffer at some time from mental illness, but as we have said, there are not always the obvious signs, and we don’t tell people do we? It is to protect them from the embarrassment.
Most people who know me now wont know I have suffered from mental illness.
My wife has been suffering a depression for some 7 years now, not always bad enough for hospitalisation, but always suffering, because it robs you of your self-esteem, it robs you of your confidence, it can rob you of your ability to work. You appear to be a benefit fraud because there is no crutch, there are no tell tale signs. This takes away the last vestige of self confidence.
My wife has been in hospital for 2 years now, two years in which she hasn’t had the motivation to look after herself, I don’t mean she has not bought designer clothes or the latest fashions, it hits at a much deeper, much more sinister level. For two years she has not been able to eat, to drink, to wash, to change, to clean her teeth… can you imagine, really imagine what that does to a lady who has always taken care of herself. She has lost weight, the failure to drink puts her kidneys and liver at risk, the dehydration also causes confusion, which simply increases the depression. Things get worse and worse, she is unable to speak, to communicate, she cant cry when upset, we don’t know if she is capable of being upset. She cant laugh when she is amused, we cant tell if she is capable of being amused.
We don’t know what is going on in her mind, there is no outward sign that anything is going in, certainly nothing is coming out.
Is the person the only one affected by this illness. Of course not, there are many knock on effects. The carer is all to often left unaware what is going on, is not kept informed by the medical staff, often because they have no idea what is happening, what the problems are.
The pressure on the mental health carer, whether their loved one is at home or in hospital, are immense. You cannot leave them on their own, These patients have lost the drive to look after themselves, they could do something to put them in real danger, either deliberately, or by lack of understanding, lack of confidence, confusion,
Of course for both the service user and carer social life ebbs away, the service user cannot mix socially because they cannot communicate, have lost all of their social skills. The carer can’t have a social life because they are exhausted, mentally and physically, by the ravages of the stress of caring around the clock, around the calendar.
Invitations stop coming in, because people know you will say no anyway, friendships end because you drift apart, the friends are frightened of the mental illness, it is harrowing to visit someone in this condition, and you just cant do it unless you are very close, such as husband and wife, parent and child. It is too much to ask others to be involved.
So after a relatively short period the service user is stranded in a bleak and frightening world of psychotic images and loss of all self esteem, the carer is exhausted and can do nothing but visit hospital, look after their loved one and sleep. Two lives are at best on hold, at worst irrecoverably destroyed.
The worst feeling is that you have lost your wife, she will never be the same again, but there is no mourning, no closure, the suffering goes on eternally, and no-one knows what recovery will bring, it will bring major changes for both parties, there is then the challenge of readjustment and coping with that.
There is really no end to this illness.
I am not asking for the earth. If we could remove the stigma from this illness, it is not normally an illness brought on by lifestyle, but more often by circumstance over which you have no control, and start to talk about it. Get people to understand the pressures of suffering and of caring, maybe then we can minimise the fear, understand more, and do more to help each other.
Remember, as you read this, one in four of you will suffer this kind of illness, when it’s your turn, would you prefer people to give you a wide berth and ignore you, as many of you do to current sufferers and carers, or would you rather we all support each other.
I know what I’d prefer. Please, try to understand things, try to help, and maybe we can improve the lot of the mental health sufferer and their carers.. It is a very hard, challenging and distressing situation
No comments:
Post a Comment