Image via WikipediaWhat does the average person know about mental illness...
ARTICLE: First published at Fortitude .
by peter petterson
What does the average person know about mental illness, I wonder? Not very much I would suggest. Until just a few years ago I didn’t know much either and had very little contact with people afflicted with what can be one of the most complex and often heartbreaking conditions possible.
If a person has a broken leg, it is very easy to treat it. Take the patient to the hospital radiology department and have the leg x-rayed. Put the broken limb in a splint and plaster and let nature do the rest. A few weeks later, without complications, the patient is usually back on the road to full recovery.
If a person has a wound, take them to their doctor or the emergency department and get it treated, and stitched up if necessary. But not mental illness. It is so very complex indeed.
There are a variety of mental health conditions: The most common is of course depression, and also very hard to diagnose correctly. Schizophrenia is becoming more known about and also bi-polar as well. However, schizophrenia is the one I have become more familiar with over the last few years. It has become evident right there in my immediate family – in my grandson. He has now suffered with schizophrenia for about four and a half years, and the doctors have struggled to contain it, to find the right balance of anti-psychotic drugs to treat it. You never cure it, just contain it and help them to live with it. His condition is that much more difficult because he has a dual diagnosos — he suffers from a mild intellectual handicap as well.
As a preamble to discussing how my grandson became mentally ill and perhaps what brought the condition on — because that is the difference between physical illnesses, conditions and injuries. Let us just drop back into his past for a few years.
From a young age he displayed some unusual and at times some strange characteristics and actions. He was hyperactive, his behaviour was unusual and he found it difficult to get on with other children. He got into situations that most children would not – he had no consequences for his actions – he didn’t learn from his mistakes that most normal children did.
At school it was discovered he wasn’t able to read or write and had some serious learning difficulties. At the age of six years he was assessed as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Oppositional Defiance Disorder and a measure of Conduct Disorder. A lot of people still don’t, and didn’t back then accept these as genuine disorders, but take my word for it – they are. It helped to explain the difficulties some children I grew up with and met at school had so many years ago. Back then there were no labels for these conditions – just bad kids who needed a good kick up the backside. They needed some good strong discipline. What they really needed was to be understood, but society didn’t have the knowledge those days to be able to do that.
From the age of six years until his late fourteenth year he had difficulties at all his schools and with senior school authorities who refused to accept that parents, or in our case grandparents, may actually know more about their child than they did. The outcome was predictable and usual – he was suspended and eventually expelled because he was a little round peg that didn’t fit in with the school’s square hole!.
But just shortly before his fifteenth birthday he had what is known these days as a psychotic episode. He had mixed with other boys of his age-group and a little older, drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana and not sleeping properly, and having that delicate disposition was pushed over the edge into a mental health disorder. The poor young fellow displayed some evidence of what we used to call madness!
He was admitted into a youth mental health unit for a number of weeks until doctors were able to control his behaviour with anti-psychotic drugs. He has periodically over four and a half years had a number of psychotic episodes, been admitted into the local mental health unit a number of times and had his medication changed as his disorder had worsened. It is also true that he was not treated quickly enough or properly at the time, and his condition had deteriorated to the point he is now on Clozapine, the most strongest and potentially dangerous medication available for mental health patients who have not responded to regular medication.
This then, dear readers, is my grandson that we still look after and have raised from the age of eight years, because there is nowhere else for him to live but in the arms of his family. New Zealand like all other western countries decided to close mental hospitals and homes and keep people in the community. Some of course have no family to look after them and others have been rejected by their families as an embarrassment.
In closing here, let me state I have had a very good education about the effects and requirements to treat schizophrenic patients – the ‘talking to voices’ syndrome. And our now nineteen year old grandson remains with us still . We hope to be able to find some way to get him able to move out into the community more without the family, and in some small way we are working towards this by having support people take him for car rides, shopping and just recently we enrolled him in a local gym to help his physical state – his weight is ballooning out because of his new medication. We hope this will prove beneficial as we try to prepare him for an independent future – we are in our sixties and won’t be able to look after him for much longer. At a later date I will discuss my grandson’s journey in more detail.
Published on Fortitude June 29, 2010
Copyright 2010 peter petterson
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