By Andrew Macdonald
From time to time, I do like to give ink to mental health files. In this edition of The Macdonald Notebook, we cover Premier Tim Houston’s fresh and enlightened approach to Nova Scotia’s mental health and addictions file.
With good government policy, Houston plans to roll out free therapy sessions as soon as this spring.
Mental health is near and dear to me.
One year, I attended a mental health chat at Halifax’s Spatz Theatre. Headlining activities that year was the visit of high-profile TSN host Michael Landsberg who has been very vocal about his own mental illness of depression. He believes it is his calling to reduce the serious stigma attached to mental disorders.
Landsberg spoke about his daily battles in 2014, and also participates in Bell’s Let’s Talk series.
Perhaps it’s depression, bi-polar or even more severe forms like the debilitating schizophrenia or its nasty cousin psychosis, but one in five Nova Scotians suffers from some form of mental illness.
Unfortunately, due to genetics, I am one of those ones in five.
For the past 15 years, I have been treated by psychiatrists; two have now retired and I’m on my third shrink who prescribes a daily regimen of 15 anti-psychotic pills.
I have two schizophrenia disorders, but there are far worse illnesses out there, and some are life sentences. So I can be treated to 80 per cent of ‘normal’ health.
While I’m prone to hearing fake voices, there’s no voice of God, no voices telling me to do violent things. My companions — the fake voices — are always third-party conversations of people saying very nasty things about me behind my back.
I also have paranoid delusional schizophrenia, so the global wars do affect that segment of my disease and I need to avoid war reports altogether.
Planned Jump Of The Bridge
Before I was diagnosed, I walked to the Angus L. Macdonald Bridge in 2014 and stood at its base for an hour during a monsoon. I was going to jump off the bridge but realized if I did, my ill father would die for sure.
That is how ill I was back then.
Now with my medical regime, I embrace life, both its ups and downs, and relish living every day to the fullest.
It pains me greatly nowadays when I hear of suicide because that person did not get help for an illness. The reality often is the person never knew they had a mental illness, so cunning and baffling it can be.
Suicide victims run the gamut of society. Rich or poor, bright high achieving students or professionally employed folk. Think of actor Robin Williams, who must have appeared to be living a charmed life.
It disturbs me when I now learn of suicide because I was not able to help that person, to tell them they had a mental illness, something most aren’t aware of, sadly.
The scion of Fred Fountain, a man worth hundreds of millions, tragically took his own life in recent years. He was a bright University of Kings College student who shared a love of music with his dad, especially learning the music of the Beatles, and would surely have led a charmed life. Instead, he jumped off the bridge.
His father is now an advocate for mental health organizations, and directs his riches to worthy mental health causes.
During my unchecked mental illness, I would invite friends over to my place, because three floors above a concrete residential building, I could hear people talk about me. The friends would also be directed to listen to the baseboards for the voices.
The voices were always nasty, and seemed to know everything I did and every thought I had. After a close friend suggested I might be mentally ill — his son had just been diagnosed with schizophrenia — I was so relieved to think the voices were actually fake.
I hopped in my car, drove to the Canadian Tire store on Quinpool Road and bought an $80 pair of ear phones, the type a woodsman would wear when chainsawing a tree. That’s when I realized I was ill because the voices were still present, despite the fact the noise should have been blocked.
At the height of my unchecked illness in 2001, I actually believed that I saw all of the 9-11 terrorists hanging out the summer prior at a convenience store in Halifax.
So ill was I back then, I even convinced a Globe and Mail scribe of this fact. That’s when the former journalist told me to fire off a 14-page report to the RCMP naming all of the terrorists and where I saw them that summer in Halifax.
Obviously, nothing came of my report, it was all a fabrication of my distorted mind, due to the psychosis. The cops told me I was wrong. I was relieved but still highly suspicious and began to carry Paderno steak knives when I was at home, believing terrorists were going to behead me.
It haunts me today to think, what I would have done in that horrible mental state if a foreigner knocked on my door. That’s a scary thought because I was in active psychosis back then.
Fortunately, I no longer harbour suspicions of foreigners, post diagnoses. Many are my coveted sources, or close friends, and attracting more foreigners to our province is the way to address a serious problem with our declining population.
That is why I think one of the biggest social advances the short lived NDP Dexter government delivered was a mental health courtroom. Fortunately, I haven’t needed to use the court, but the reality is that a lot of mentally unstable people suffering chemical imbalances have run-ins with the law. Andre Denny is one of them.
Denny was convicted of second-degree murder of prominent gay activist Raymond Taavel, who was beloved by all who had the good fortune to meet him. His death hit me hard.
Raymond was a friend, he’d been to my home for Chinese food. We shared drinks together, and often gossiped about life.
His friends grieved the death and wanted vengeance on the killer. Yet, Denny was a mental patient at the East Coast Forensic Centre, out on a day pass.
It brings to light an issue of mental illness. Mass society often only hears about cases such as Denny or Glen Race, who commit heinous crimes due to mental disorders.
Many folk with mental illness turn to street drugs or booze to cope. They self-medicate. They darken windows and stay in their homes, some unable to even get out of bed. I turned to drink but the booze only interfered with the work of my medicine and made things worse.
I’m now sober. Today, I mostly have peace from the voices and my mind is no longer distorted, the pills I take morning and night, are doing what they are supposed to do, although periodically the voices re-appear, especially it seems during full moons.
Now, I am smart enough to know when they appear that they are fake, and mostly today life is grand for me once again.
It certainly is worth living, for sure. And, I now live it to the fullest, my mental illness be damned.
