On this year’s World Mental Health Day, I wish to write in praise of my wife, and the manner in which she has used her own mental health issues to attack the stigma society still attaches to a medical condition as common as a broken leg. Seventeen years ago, Lynda was diagnosed with clinical depression, and I can tell you the day the diagnosis was received was a great and joyous day in our household. Seriously! Let me try to explain why.
Lynda was behaving strangely. My first memory of it was an evening when we were relaxing at home and she stepped around a bit of rubbish lying on the floor, rather than picking it up. “How odd”, I remember thinking, before getting on with the important task of watching football on the television. But as the problem developed, the symptoms began to impact in more challenging ways. For example, we had to stop our Friday treat of eating out, because it frayed my nerves to sit and wait as Lynda’s new-found indecision left her unable to choose a dish from the restaurant menu. Her developing behavioural patterns were, frankly, frustrating. I do not feel proud to say that, but it would be a lie not to.
This was also the start of a long period of fear for me. I knew something was wrong, and clearly, it was in her head. Was she sick? Was it serious? And, of course, in the back of your mind, forcing its way out from time to time, was the killer thought – is Lynda dying?
It came to a head the day our GP was due to make a house call. He phoned me at work. I panicked when I was told he was on the line, because it was past the appointment time. The killer thought broke loose, running wild with my imagination. But it wasn’t that. The doctor was reporting that he had failed to see her. He had called, her car was there, and he knew she was in, but she didn’t answer his knock. Later, I discovered she had been hiding below a window upstairs – literally curled up and wishing he would go away. That was the tipping point.
With the help of the family, we got Lynda to see her doctor. After that, it was a short step to making sure she was examined, and that quickly led to the diagnosis, and the indescribable relief that it was a recognised, familiar ailment, with a course of treatment, just as there is for a broken limb.
But there is a big difference between mental health issues and broken limbs. If you break your leg, you turn up for work on crutches, and your colleagues rush over to find out what happened and maybe even write a silly message on your plaster. But if the problem is mental, your colleagues tend to give you a wide birth, and the last thing they want to do is ask about it.
Of course, there are mental conditions that require the patient to be isolated from society, but the same is true for a number of physical diseases. In both categories, they are the exception; the rule is that one in four of us will suffer some form of mental health issue at some time. For our own wellbeing, we need to face up to that fact.
In Lynda’s case, diagnosis led to treatment, and of all the people and prescriptions, the impact of Liz, the Community Psychiatric Nurse still shines in the memory; here was someone who brushed off the very idea of stigma like a bit of fluff on a coat collar.
That is why on this Mental Health Day, Lynda and I will host some mental health patients from the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust. We will gather in the very posh atmosphere of Parliament Buildings’ Members Dining Room, and celebrate the art works they have produced as part of their treatment, as facilitated by Ned Jackson Smyth, Art Care artist in residence at the SEHSCT. Lynda and I were privileged to be invited to view their work at Ards Town Hall recently. We thought it deserved a wider audience, and that the artists might like a day out at the Big House they fund with their taxes. So, Dear Reader, you can ignore World Mental Health Day, you can mark it, or you can do what we’re doing, and celebrate it, because sometimes being told a loved one has a mental health issue is a mighty relief.
