by Fiona Best

I used to be a victim of mental illness. Or rather I was the victim of the label given to me in 1991 after presenting to a psychiatric hospital in a state of terror. I was four months pregnant when admitted to hospital and also the mother of an eighteen month old child. For ten months prior I had not slept. My thinking was frantic and unrelenting. Self-hatred, fear, and desperate analysing tortured me day and night. My body was in flight, fuelled by adrenalin. I was trying to out-run fear.  My thinking was killing me. Terrifying thoughts were causing my body to disintegrate with anxiety. I was almost incontinent with fear, on the toilet intermittently 24 hours a day, urinating and emptying my bowels. My heart pounded furiously. I shook and sweated and swallowed. It was difficult to eat because my digestive system was tight and constricted with terror. While ruminating on my destructive thoughts, I clenched and chewed with my teeth and jaws.  My eyes were wide with fear and the slightest sound startled me. It was near impossible to force myself to bathe, to brush my teeth or shave my legs. A mad woman looked back at me whenever I accidentally looked in the mirror. She was dishevelled and unkept; her hair knotted and dank. I was mad. You see, I was driven mad by my thinking.

The label given to me by the doctors was ‘severe agitated endogenous depression’. I was told I had inherited a biological illness from my family. To that extent my family history was compelling. In June 1986 my mother committed suicide. In September 1986, my paternal grandmother followed suit, and in December the following year my younger brother also ended his own life. I discovered some years later that my maternal grandmother had also suicided when my mother was a young girl. It was a convincing family history of mental distress. The doctor prescribed me a combination of drugs as well as two series of shock treatments while in hospital: the first of six treatments, the second, four. During outpatient visits to my psychiatrist after discharge from hospital, I was told that unless I took psychotropic drugs for the rest of my life and had regular shock treatment as required, I had an 85% chance of killing myself.

By profession I’d trained as a physiotherapist; little good that seemed to do me as an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital. Mental illness was my problem but I was a physical therapist. My head and my body seemed completely separate from each other. I had no idea how to bring my understanding of anatomy, physiology, movement and breathing to bear on my ‘mentally ill’ state. According to our training and to western perspectives on health, one was either sick in the body or sick in the head. The drugs and shock treatment knocked me out of my senses; it was designed to stop me feeling anything much at all.

I became an angry, self-pitying victim of circumstances. I hated myself and blamed myself for being labelled with severe agitated endogenous depression. I was a flawed and loathsome human being. I hated and blamed ? my ex husband, my father, doctors and drug companies, to name a few targets, for my overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. To me, they were the perpetrators of my distress. When projecting my feelings outwards, righteous anger and hatred consumed me; it consumed my whole body. I often shook with righteous vitriol. Those feelings seemed justified because I identified myself as a victim rendered powerless by the system and by the people around me. Underlying this bitter and helpless feeling was the sense that there was nothing I could do to help myself. I felt sorry for myself and raged against injustice. This kept me stuck playing the victim. I was miserable, resentful, and utterly repellent to those around me.

The doctors explained to me, in an attempt to absolve me of blame, that it was not my fault that ‘illness’ had overwhelmed me. I was a victim of my genes, of my family history. But the label that was supposed to make me feel better about myself instead rendered me useless. Poor angry, frightened, lonely and bitter me. I handed over my power to the doctors because I had no idea what else I could do.

But thank God I learned to take my power back. Otherwise I’d almost certainly be dead or permanently institutionalized. The key event that shocked me into action and out of helplessness occurred 18 months after I’d been discharged from hospital. My marriage had ended. I had two small children to care for, and I still had fortnightly visits to the psychiatrist who continued to prescribe mind numbing medication. While devoted to my children and responsible for their welfare, I felt dead inside. I lived in a chemically induced straight jacket. Shut off from the world and shut off from my life force, I lived a robotic existence.

One night, care of a friend’s invitation, I attended a talk at The Relaxation Centre in Brisbane. It was called, ‘Taking Responsibility for your Life’. The speaker was a feisty middle aged woman with dark hair, sharp eyes and a no nonsense manner. At the end of an inspiring and challenging evening, she offered to take questions. I raised my arm cautiously and was shocked when she immediately responded.

‘Go ahead’, she said.

So I told her about the deaths of my mother, grandmothers and brother. I explained that the doctors had said I suffered from a genetically determined mental illness and that ongoing medication and regular shock treatments were the only way for me to avoid following the family pattern of suicide.

Suddenly, the woman threw both her arms straight up in the air.

‘What do you think this is?’ she demanded.

I said, ‘I’ve got no idea.’

She put her arms down and then did the two fingers up sign with her right hand and said, ‘It’s a big one of these.’

I’d been expecting a different response.

‘Oh you poor thing,’ would not have surprised me. But the giant ‘ups’ sign did.

She continued by throwing both arms back up into the air. Using a strong voice she said, ‘And this is what you need to do to the psychiatrist. You are not your mother. You are not your brother or either of your grandmothers. You are you. Remember that. And now it’s time to stand up and take responsibility for your own life.’

So I went home and threw all my pills down the toilet. (I do not suggest you try this method of changing medication. Ask for help or get a second opinion.) I saw the psychiatrist the following week and told him I would no longer need his help. Then, like Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff, I got started on the rest of my life. Now it’s time to get on with yours.

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