Mothers’ stories of mental illness

BY WENDY ELLIOTT

Kings County Register

Marty is a grandmother several times over, but she feels as if the umbilical cord is still attached to her own son, Adam.

“Sometimes, he’s like a four-year-old who wants to go out and play on the highway.

“He’s a threat to himself.”

Marty’s tears flow as she describes life with a paranoid schizophrenic. She wipes them away with her hand, though, and keeps talking.

Although he always acted out, at the age of 17, Adam began behaving erratically.

“He’d burn himself with cigarettes. He wouldn’t go to school. He did really weird things.”

Adam became a skilled tradesman, but “every time there was a crisis, he’d lose it.”

This strong and handsome man, now in his early 30s, has lost a wife, two children, a home and every job he’s ever had.

“He doesn’t see what you and I see. He hears voices in his head.”

Mental health professionals have told Adam his illness was all in his head, Marty says, suggesting he take Tylenol.

“He’d sit babbling in front of the doctor. He wouldn’t help him. In fact, he left him and walked out the door. Those that are ill need help.”

She terms adult protection services useless: “‘Go and stay with your mother,’ they’d say.” And, Marty adds, community services treat the mentally ill as capable of work. They’re not.

She blames a healthcare system that doesn’t help the mentally ill.

“They do not want to deal with it – financially.”

Marty says her son was only diagnosed four years ago. He spent a month in the hospital, “was totally drugged and then told to go work in the woods. He could hardly lift a chain saw.”

He tried suicide. He’s slept in clothing bins and eaten out of dumpsters. Since sick people are ill, they act strange, often getting evicted. Adam has slept in a tent and frozen while trying to pick apples. Local police know him well: they chase him out of public places if he is behaving erratically but, sometimes, his mother says, officers have given him money.

“Sometimes, he’ll lose it and break things. I’ve lost 50 TVs while he looked for microchips.”

While some families get burned out trying to help - “they had to let them go or lose their minds,” Marty has made her son’s improvement a mission.

“There isn’t anything I won’t do for that child. He’s living on the edge of society like he’s transparent. When I look at my son, I see the loving, sharing, compassionate person he is. He’d give away his shirt to help someone else.

“He can be very angry and frustrated,” she notes. When he’s on his meds, he’s 100 per cent better. “He still can’t concentrate, but he wants to work. I’ve got a piece of him back.”

Marty has been to court twice to try to access treatment for Adam. With the involuntary treatment law, she encountered a warm-hearted judge.

“I sat there, read my letter and cried. I told him, he’s not an adult, he’s my child and he’s going to do something to hurt someone.”

Adam has been criminalized because of his illness on an assault charge.

This judge ordered him treated and he spent two weeks at Valley Regional Hospital. The result, Marty terms, was a miracle.

“It’s a blessing. I see his blue eyes and there’s life there. He’s a grown man, but it’s like the first day of school.”

Looking back, Marty says, “this has been hell.”

No pill for disease, stigma and lack of support

Pat, whose son, Jack, also has schizophrenia; says he was diagnosed when he was about 23 - he is now 37.

“It has been a long road for our family, and that illness has coloured all of our lives. It is just the saddest thing to see what happens to a young person with this disease.”

Pat says support he receives from any mental health professionals is minimal and credits monthly visits with his psychiatrist for keeping him out of hospital.

“The medication that these patients need to take is no magic pill: it enables them to function somewhat normally. Believe me, I pray for a magic pill.”

Stigma is a big problem. As a culture, Pat believes, we punish the ill and vulnerable.

“As it is now, he has not made any new friends since he became ill. Understandably, people are sometimes frightened or put off by his demeanour.”

Jack, who holds down a job in a restaurant kitchen, has social contact with his siblings and parents.

“It must be a very lonely existence for him.He is one of the fortunate ones: he can hold a job and maintain an adult living arrangement.”

(Editor’s note: all the names in this article have been changed to protect families from the stigma of mental illness.)



Care and stigma

A recently-released psychiatric patient is believed to have committed suicide this summer. Last month, police were called to Valley Regional Hospital to remove a psychiatric in-patient.

Long-time Canadian Mental Health Association volunteer Terry Hebb says he sees no improvement in local services.

“They have not gotten better. In fact, they continue to turn a blind eye.”

Many in the local community don’t bother going to Valley Regional for mental health treatment, Hebb says.

“Go to Halifax, they tell their friends, because your chances of getting help here are very slim. It’s bad all over the province. There aren’t enough psychiatrists.”

One in four Nova Scotians will have a mental illness in their lives. Kings West MLA Leo Glavine says the mentally ill are often criminalized, “which is not really looking after their full needs. This is a big issue and very complex.”

If you are a criminal, you actually get help, Hebb says.

“It shouldn’t be that way. There are real ways to help someone before they commit a violent crime.”

According to Hebb, many patients move to Kentville because of the regional hospital, expecting help. Housing for the chronically ill is a major problem.

“Beds at Valley Regional go empty because they won’t admit patients. Then, they release them at 5 p.m. on a Friday and they have nowhere to go.”

A woman who befriended a patient released August 8 describes meeting callous healthcare providers, no release plan and a young man left raving with a plastic bag full of three prescriptions in his hand. A few days later in a Kentville apartment, he covered the windows in toothpaste so no one could look in, gave away his groceries and burned possessions in the parking lot.

“Every day there’s something. Twice he’s locked himself out. I’ve had enough. Nobody takes ownership of him and I hear there are three more like him out there,” she said.

Glavine says the treatment and care of mental health patients and families has presented one of the more distressing chapters in his public life.

“Long-term treatment and support are sketchy at our regional hospital. Sometimes, it is easier and quicker to hand out a prescription than deal with deep psychological problems.”

Back in January, Dr. John Campbell, head of mental health and addictions services, said the Annapolis Valley Health District had hired a manager of community support and rehabilitation in September 2007 to take a collaborative approach to chronic mental health cases. Campbell also said psychiatric beds in Kentville are full 50 to 60 per cent of the time.

Last month, this province’s deputy health minister called on mental health organizations and the public to help her light a fire under politicians to do more. Speaking at the opening of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s national conference in Dartmouth, Cheryl Doiron said, "it’s very hard to get it to be the primary issue, particularly for politicians who are making budget decisions... because they are not getting the same pressure about mental health as they get about cancer and coronary disease and diabetes.”

Mental health spending is set at just over 3.5 per cent of the $3.2-billion provincial health budget. The Mental Health Commission of Canada says mental illness drains $51 billion from the Canadian economy each year.