Dealing with mental illness

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I almost spilled my morning coffee when I read the sub headline Reduce stigma of suicide, report urges. The draft report, published in the news, was from the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

I appreciate that mentally ill people face stigma all the time, from potential employers to landlords to just making friends. But those are the ones who still want to live.

I have had close relatives who suffer from mental illness. I know f the absolute grief and horror of suicide. But so far, "stigma" is not top of mind for anyone caught in the awful aftermath of either a successful or failed suicide.

There have been so many commissions on mental health I have lost track. There are mental illnesses weeks and mental health websites. There are schizophrenia societies, to which I used to send money. They hold balls to raise funds. There are mail-outs to communicate "mission statements."

In the meantime, we have mentally ill people wandering around our streets talking to their voices, living in filthy conditions with no food or warm beds. They suffer from neglect, pure and simple. Right here in downtown, caring, compassionate Canada.

If they "act out" they are arrested and sometimes locked in jail. Which I suppose is a step up, because at least they have a roof over their heads.

Here is what mentally ill people need. Pay attention, everyone. This is from the school of hard knocks. There are two things:

First, they need meds. As in med-i-ca-tion. You know -- pharmaceuticals.

I realize this little piece of news will upset all those who are permanently outraged at Big Pharma for making Obscene Profits on the drugs they have developed.

It will also annoy those idiots on the fringes of rational thought who think psychosis can be cured with megavitamins or herbal tea and acupuncture.

It won't. And there is no evidence it will anytime soon.

But there is plenty of evidence that anti-psychotic drugs help people with serious illnesses such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.

Anyone with a family member who is suffering from the symptoms of untreated mental illness will understand what I am saying here.

Their brains have gone haywire, chemically speaking. The symptoms are hallucinations (voices), delusions (the waitress is an FBI agent) and deranged thought (caffeine will help me sleep).

They are completely out of touch with reality.

Psychotic illness wreaks havoc with patients and their families. It ruins their lives.

It gets so bad that at black moments in the middle of the night, when things have spun out of control and you have been tried and tested beyond endurance and you are tired and can't think straight, you actually start to wish your loved one would... take a powder? Disappear out of your life? And yes, even die.

It's either that or hopefully you will die. At 3 a.m. it makes no difference. Anything would be better than where you are right now.

But then morning comes and with the light you feel a bit better, but also wracked with guilt for thinking terrible things. You gird yourself with hope and energy and face the onslaught of another day.

So meds help. I'm not saying they're perfect. Even the newer atypical anti-psychotics have some pretty disturbing side-effects. By "newer," I refer to anti-psychotic drugs that became available in the 1990s. They are more effective, with slightly fewer of the horrendous side-effects of older drugs invented in the 1950s.

Frankly, the only thing worse than taking these powerful psychotropic drugs is not taking them. They have saved countless lives and made awful situations less awful.

The second thing they need is housing, Why? Because if they don't have a place to live, it's really hard to remember to take their meds. Why? Because they don't have anyplace to put the little bottles. Like, duh, a medicine chest. Or the kitchen counter or whatever piece of furniture the patient chooses as most likely to remind him/her to take the meds.

Sure there's other things that would help patients to get through the day. In a perfect world there would be friends, family, food, behavioural therapy, mentors, a social life, sports, movies, maybe even a job! Kind of like what normal people need.

But first they need meds. And a place to put them.

Someone near and dear to me recently stopped taking the pills that kept him symptom-free. I guess he felt the side-effects were severely impacting his life.

So now, instead of fussing about weight gain, dry mouth, tremors, insomnia, somnolence and lack of motivation, we worry about delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, impulse control, mania, poverty, hospitalization and jail.

And always, lurking in the shadows, suicide.

I hope that the MHCC final report is more grounded in reality. We don't need more commissions on mental health.

We need decisive action on mental illness.

Marilyn Baker is a freelance writer.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 27, 2011 A16