All over bar the shouting - heading down the hill to schizophrenia without realising it...

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All over bar the shouting - heading down the hill to schizophrenia without really knowing it..




ARTICLE: First published at Fortitude



by peter petterson



My previous article concerning mental health was really a historical account concerning my grandson's problematical life in childhood, adolescence and his mental breakdown at the age of fifteen years.



Here we will hit the keys and see where we end up tonight. Do you ever get like that: Just freewheeling your way through some writing, letting you brain and fingers do the walking? Just like an advert for Yellow Pages — let your fingers do the walking!



So what do I remember about his mental breakdown? Not a lot really. In such situations I don't think you really know a lot. Who knows what goes on in a person's brain? They can quiely deterioate without anybody realising it. In point of fact the youngster cracked up, after his session of drugging, drinking and not sleeping. It was all over bar the shouting when he told his grandmother he was a 'pussy' and didn't want to fight with one of the boys anymore.I didn't even know that was what he had been doing to try and prove himself with the 'normal' teens he was associating with there in the neighbourhood. Trying to be just one of the boys in the 'Hood.



Well it happened. He went all quiet; quite a change from the hyperactive kid he had been most of his life. He was taken into the local hospital, admitted into a ward for the night from Accident and Emergency, and the next day was taken to the regional youth mental health unit, about 20 miles away. He was on his way, on a journey he will be on for the rest of his life. The controversial little pain in the backside he could often be, to the frightened little rabbit he was before he went into hospital.



He would not return as the youngster we knew, but he would return and continue developing into the schizophrenic young man he is today. All that in less than a month! He was prescribed and regularly given Risperadol, an anti-psychotic medication he would be on for a couple of years or so. And it had side-affects like other medication he was on and others he would be on in the future. Like the mood stabiliser called Lithium. He had to have blood tests every three months because it could have detrimental effects on his renal functions in time. I can't remember when he started talking to himself — was it when he came back from the mental health unit? I'm not really sure about that. But he certainly became different and difficult. He was obviously hearing the voices pretty early in the piece; but we aren't sure when he obviously began to respond to them.



But we became concerned with the side-effects of his medication in future months. We found it difficult to get our points of view through to his health professionals — doctor and social worker. We did not have a good relationship with his social worker because he did not respond adequately to our questions and concerns for our grandson's well-being. The doctor was nice enough and tried to cooperate with us when we thought he was on too much medication — but we were ignorant and inexperienced with mental health problems. The dosage of his Risperadol was a bit like a yo-yo for a few weeks as the doctor tried to find a balance in his medication.



Finding a balance in the dosage of psychotic medication is something we would learn about in future years. Side-effects are something we would also discover too. It wasn't too long before he had a relapse and ended back in hospital again. He was now well on the road to being a confirmed schizophrenic. We knew also that alcohol was good for him in only small quantities, and marijuana was a poison for him in any quantities. The latter would be confimed by other mental health patients we knew on later occasions. We would also learn that you never recover from serious mental disorders — doctors can only manage the illness through the correct dosage of the right medication. Medication had now become as important to our grandson as food and drink. Yes, he was well on the road, alright!















































Published on Fortitude July 10, 2010

Copyright 2010 peter petterson

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Times were a changing then - back to the nostalgic fifties...

 


Times were a changing - back to the nostalgic fifties...



ARTICLE: First  published at Fortitude



by peter petterson



As the years I've been on this planet actually begin to increase, time begins to peel back and thoughts turn to a different era. A different, less stressful and more peaceful time — back to those nostalgic innocent days of my childhood, down in the South Island of my homeland — New Zealand way down in the South Pacific.



Back to the 1950's when the population was half of what it is now, when New Zealand was Britain's farm, when inflation was something done to a football bladder,cars were a mixture of English and American; and Toyotas and Nissans were some unknown names along with karate back in Tokyo, and my hometown of Christchurch had as many bicycles as they do now. Peak hours would see hundreds of these push bikes streaming down the main street,(including mine on occasions), Colombo Street — about five and a half miles long with the title of longest street in New Zealand for decades.



Weekends were taken up with sport: mainly rugby union in the winter, and rugby league, soccer, and hockey having their followers, and outdoor basketball(as netball was called then). In summer there was mainly cricket, athletics and swimming. Softball would arrive very soon once the American influence began to infiltrate the former British colony a couple of thousands of miles off-shore from the West island — Australia. New Zealand was closed on the weekends then, no weekend shopping apart from a couple of areas in Christchurch's beach suburb of New Brighton, and up on Wellington's west coast in Paraparaumu.



In the summer the beaches attracted Kiwis by the thousands, and the tens of thousands on the other side of the Tasman Sea at beaches such as Bondi which would begin to attract New Zealanders too, in just a few years.



But out on the Canterbury plains Kiwis had almost an obsession with rivers on Sundays — picnicking up by the riverbeds, thermettes boiling away on the river banks with pristine water from the river. Firewood a plenty — and a .22 rifle packed in the trunk of the car for the inevitable pot shot at the pests of the plains — the damned wild rabbits. Those trunks have now been anglicised and are known as boots. Many a trip back home with the trunks filled with pine cones from the many plantations in the Canterbury area. No television in New Zealand in the fifties — no coca cola, pepsi or hamburgers either; but they were well on the way when the fifties turned to the sixties. Changes were on the horizon. The strongest thing most teens those days were some cold flagons of draught beer, or a bottle of Scotch if you could afford it — or scrounge it from your elders.



For me a couple of times a year, was a couple of weeks during the school holidays on one of the mixed farms — 30 minutes from town — dairy, sheep, pigs, poultry, crops and the annual haymaking. Could there be anything more healthy for a city boy with most of the food grown on site apart from a few staples — and fresh warm unpasterised milk straight from the cow? Great times as long as you watched your footing around the yards and cow bails. And yes, don't tease and antagonise that big black bull way out in his paddock.



New Zealand's foreign policy was British foreign policy — but change was on the horizon. Britain would join the European Common Market, and New Zealand would have to seek new markets for its primary produce, and that American Rock and Roll music would soon see Americans in person down Christchurch way as the American Deep Freeze program down south in the Antarctic in the New Zealand summer was based out by Christchurch Airport, and the American icebreakers berthed at Lyttleton Harbour, just over the Port Hills from Christchurch City.



Change was a coming, so was the coca cola, pepsi, hamburgers and American cream freeze ice-cream. Also in the New Zealand psyche just a few years in the future was a foreign southeast asian country named South Vietnam. The happy city boy would grow up and witness some real and significant social changes in New Zealand.



New Zealand would become a major mens softball world power in a few years too. Elvis would be joined later by names that would become world pop music icons — the Beatles and the Rolling Stones — and Vietnam would become a dirty word, and New Zealand's volunteer returned soldiers would have to be whisked in during the hours of darkness. Times were really changing!

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