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Are you or someone you know suffering from severe mental illness? Get help quickly. A broken leg is less severe than acute mental illness, which can and does kill. I’d rather have a permanent limp than my own mental illness – at least I could trust my perceptions. At least I wouldn’t feel so low that I could jump off a cliff.
I was in group therapy for alcoholism in the early 2000’s when a new man joined. He stayed quiet for a while before piping up with the reason he started to drink himself to death. He was a Royal Marine who fought in a battle in the Falklands War of 1982 (during which Britain threw Argentina out after Argentina invaded the South Atlantic islands). His battalion fought in the battle of Mount Longdon, where both sides ran out of ammunition. The order was given to “Fix Bayonets” and they won the battle in hand-to-hand combat.
A woman in the group asked, “What has that to do with MY problems?” If I had a bayonet right then, she would have been no more - such was my fury at that comment. If anyone in the group had an excuse to blot out their memories, it was he. In the UK we do not have a Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) and often our soldiers fall through the net. The US, the VA provides health and welfare benefits to soldiers, some of whom have done and seen things no one should ever do or see.
On May 10 this year, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a judgment against the VA. Judge Reinhardt stated, “On an average day, 18 veterans of our nation’s armed forces take their lives. Of those, roughly one quarter are enrolled with the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system. Among all veterans enrolled in the system, an additional 1,000 attempt suicide each month. Although the VA is obligated to provide veterans mental health services, many veterans with severe depression or post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are forced to wait weeks for mental health referrals and are given no opportunity to request or demonstrate their need for expedited care. For those who commit suicide in the interim, care does not come soon enough.”
The Court found that the system of mental health care for veterans is not fit for purpose. The VA might appeal the Court's finding.
I once interviewed a man who had a sudden onset of psychosis brought on by drug abuse and the stress of living in extreme poverty. One morning he thought ‘they’ were going to kill him. He armed himself with kitchen knives and went out of the house. He found himself on a bus, where someone was staring at him. He slashed out with his knife, severely wounding the man. He jumped off the bus and ran. Someone gave chase, and he pierced their heart with a carving knife. To this day I cannot blame the guy, because given the choice he would not have killed or injured anyone. His psychosis made him believe that he was in mortal danger. If you were pursued down the street by a man you thought was going to kill you, and you had a gun, you’d shoot him. Unfortunately mental illness can make fiction true, because you have no reason to believe your mind is lying, and so you act on your perceived reality. My friend is not a ‘killer’ of the sort that murders for fun. He was an ordinary guy who was lied to by the organ that gives you all of the information you have about the world you are in – the brain.
Mental illness is irrational. A person should be happy having survived a tour of duty 5000 miles away from home, shouldn’t he? Instead he finds himself so depressed that he wishes to do the job that the enemy set out to do in the first place – die. The worst thing about new cases of severe mental illness is that in most cases the person doesn't know he is mentally ill. This requires friends and family.
In my case, I was tricked into seeing my family doctor. She asked me about the reality I was experiencing, which in my case was so terrifying the film character Jason Bourne would have tried to violently escape. When a psychiatrist finally convinced me that I was not a character in a thriller novel but a man struggling to live his own life, the relief was the greatest thing I have had in my life. It felt good to be a loser, because knowing that I could start winning again.
Recovery from mental illness is all about starting to win again. It shouldn’t be seen as a living death but as a fresh start in life. At core, this is what being treated quickly for severe mental illness is about – a fresh start.
Photo: Meg Wills, Creative Commons 2.0
Thanks for this perceptive insight Richard. The spectrum of mental ill health is truly a hidden epidemic, still inadequately recognised and treated.