Eleven years on...

Eleven years have passed as of today. Eleven years since my first episode that landed me in hospital in a psychiatric unit. I remember it well, thinking that the on-call Psych (I was admitted after hours) thought I must be crazy. I remember thinking of all the stigma and shame associated with mental health. In the past, I only knew of a few people with mental health issues (including my mother) and how their issues were considered very much a taboo subject. I remember being so afraid. As I entered the unit at night, it was so quiet. I was afraid of what was going to happen to me.

I was originally diagnosed with psychotic depression and was given ECT as treatment. I'll admit at the time, the treatment undoubtedly saved my life. After months in hospital, I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I even told the doctors I didn't believe my diagnosis was correct, but somehow, my protests seemed to cement my diagnosis further.

Years passed with ups and downs, psychotic episode followed episode. Even today, my medical files state "extensive hospitalisations". I lost all meaning to my life and lost a job I loved, my own home, my friends, my family, my relationships and all my money. Soon enough I was isolated and alone, homeless and penniless. I was sleeping rough in sometimes unforgiving environments. I met a social worker who literally went out of her way to find me stable housing and to sort out an application for welfare payments (something I was grossly embarrassed about having worked all my life). It seemed again self-stigma had reared it's ugly head.

Fast forward a year or two. I was again in the land of the living despite occasionally being hospitalised for psychosis here and there. I was able to afford treatment privately and therefore avoided getting lost in the system. Then came the mania...

My first manic episode was a heady experience. I do not remember much of it except my world was on fast forward and the rest of the world outside a little bubble I had created mentally, struggled to keep up. Friends finally found me at a Casino blackjack table drinking champagne for breakfast and gambling away my savings. I was gripped with major delusions of grandeur and believed for a time, that I was famous. I was hospitalised immediately and for a lengthy amount of time.Following my hospitalisation, I was given another diagnosis (in consultation with a clinical psychologist and my psychiatrist) of schizoaffective disorder - bipolar type.

These days I am, all things considered, doing reasonably well. I still have my dark moments (as fellow forumites know), however, I have not been hospitalised since the beginning of 2017. I am looking at studying next semester, a diploma of community services work (specialising in mental health). This diploma in accompaniment to my other education (diplomas in counselling and mental health), I want to go to University and complete a degree (even possibly a Masters) in social work. I want to be able to help others in the same way I was helped all those years ago.

I no longer allow shame and stigma rule my life. I have accepted by and large, I am not my illness. It does not define me. Nor should it define anyone living with mental health issues. Eleven years on, some days are shiny, other days are stormy. The thing I have to remember is to keep searching for the rainbows.

Thanks for reading.

Q