REHAB.

I was about forty nine years old. I plunged into a very bad period of acute Depression. It went on for two years. By the end of it I was suicidal. My psychiatrist knew that I was in danger. I had attempted suicide several times. It was time for me to go to a rehab.
Though the rehab had more or less all the comforts of home, the first six months were hell. I was very ill, and I refused to fall in line with the schedule of the rehab. The residents had to do Yoga early in the morning. Then there were a series of workshops which acted as therapy for the patients. I refused to co operate. This got me into all sorts of trouble, which increased the depression.
But after six months I started  responding to the treatment. Slowly, I started coming out of the Depression. As soon as I realized that I was getting well, my behavior started changing. I started taking an active part in the activities. I started doing well in the workshops. It was like going to school all over again. I started recovering fast.
Once I was out of the woods, I started becoming well known in the rehab. All the patients came to know me and they were asked to follow my example. After two and a half years of acute pain, I was happy again.
I stayed in the rehab for three years. I had a relapse after two years but I came out of it fast. Maybe this is difficult to be believe but I actually enjoyed my stay. People have a very bad opinion about rehabs, but mine was a good one. They took care of me
After three years, when it was time for me to go home, I was actually a little sad. The rehab had become a familiar place and it had become my home. But I was well again and I was free. It was a time to rejoice.    

PROBLEM.

My son was five years old when my marriage broke up. I had to leave my husband's home and shift over to my parent's place. My sister and brother in law lived with my parents. Though I was working I earned very little. My family supported me during this difficult phase of my life.
I thought that my son was too young to react to the situation. That he would get over it quickly. After all young children were resilient. I may have been wrong.
My son had been very close to his father when the marriage came to an end. Maybe he missed him a lot. I had given my husband total freedom to visit his son whenever he liked and for however long he wished to. There had been no formal divorce. Only a separation. But somehow he got alienated from his son. He rarely visited him.
Meanwhile my brother in law adopted my son. I thought that since my son had found a paternal figure in his life, he would not be affected by the broken marriage. I was wrong.
From the age of eight, he got into wrong company. He started stealing, telling lies and cutting school. He was an extremely poor student. Though I tried to teach him, he easily got bored and lost his concentration. He just would not pay attention. He was intelligent but it was really difficult to teach him.
When he was thirteen years old, he failed his eighth standard exams. He had to repeat the class. I was very disappointed, since I had spent a lot of time and energy coaching him.
Then one day he came home with a letter from his school in his hand. The school had expelled him! He went to school in his school bus. He would get down near a cyber cafe and play games till school came to an end. Then he would climb back into the bus and come home as if nothing had happened. He had not attended school for a whole month! The school should have intimated us when he didn't turn up after a week. But most probably, they didn't want him because he had failed.
I sent him to a psychiatrist. I no longer knew how to deal with my son. I desperately needed some help. He was diagnosed with a Attention Deficit Disorder. The doctor said he would not be able to study farther. He would have to acquire some skill, like that of an electrician or a carpenter.
We were all shocked! Take him out of school?! Then my brother in law said,
"No son of mine will remain uneducated. He will continue schooling despite of what the doctor said."
So the hunt for a new school began. I was absent during this period of my son's life as i succumbed to a very bad attack of Depression. It took me two and a half years to recover and I had to be sent to a rehab for three years. I missed out on some of the most vital years of his life when he was going through his teenage years. He, like all teenagers, started rebelling. He had lost his father in his earlier years and now he had lost his mother as well. This may have had a profound effect in his life. And though my sister and brother in law did their best to look after him, he started doing everything wrong. He started sniffing glue. Then ha got hooked into Marijuana. He experimented with hard drugs like LSD.
After I came back from the rehab I was told that my brother in law and sister were facing some financial problems. I had to go back to my marriage. My son joined me after a few days because my brother in law was fed up with his bad behavior. My son was miserable to leave his former home. He rebelled even more. He got stoned with Marijuana and refused to go to school.
Now my son is twenty six years old. He does not work or study. He does nothing but play computer games the whole day long. He wants to become a grand master at these games but that is a gamble. He does nothing to earn his living. He is all right now since he has his father and mother to look after him. But I worry about his future.
I have only one solution to this problem. That he visits a psychiatrist again and gets rid of his disorder. Moreover he gets treated for his addiction of Marijuana. He is changing slowly. he is growing up and becoming aware of his responsibilities. I hope this treatment helps him to stand on his own feet. I can only hope.      

MEDICATION.

Medication is an effective treatment for mental illnesses. The disease may be caused by many factors, a chemical imbalance in the brain, hereditary, prevailing circumstances or the person's nature. Whatever be the reason, mental illness can be controlled.
One of the chief ways of controlling mental illness is by medications. These medicines not only bring an end to the disease but also prevent them. Of course, there is no guarantee that the disease will not occur again. Mental illness is like Malaria. Even if you get rid of it, it may happen again. Thus you have to keep up with your medications. It is a disease that is controllable, but not curable.
Before you do anything else, have your meds. This is an advice given by my doctor and it is very wise to do so. If you miss out on your medication you may have a relapse. Then you are back where you had started.
Many people believe that they are cured when there disease comes to an end. This is a terrible mistake. They stop taking their drugs and they relapse. And the agonizing process of controlling the illness starts all over again. 
But there is a big disadvantage. These meds have side effects. Sometimes severe side effects may cause a physical disability in the patient. When I took Lithium, after a few years my hands started trembling. These tremors were so acute that I could not lift a glass of water. The water would spill out each time I raised the glass to my lips. My doctor was very concerned. He put me on a drug that controlled my tremors. But that brought on depression. So much so that I told my doctor to discontinue the drug. I could bear the tremors, but I couldn't handle the depression any longer.
There are other side effects like constipation, weight gain and hair fall. They are all distressing.
But there is no alternative to medicines. You either bear the side effects or find ways of dealing with them. My advice is to consult the doctor.   

SECRET.

"Don't tell anybody that you are a Bipolar patient. They will think you are mad."
This is what my psychiatrist told me when I lost my job. I had to tell my boss that I had a Bipolar Disorder. He had seen me walking around restlessly during the office hours. He fired me the next day. In spite of my restlessness, I had worked diligently and hard. My boss had liked me. But one word about my mental illness and he threw me out. He didn't even bother to think whether I was capable or not.
Having a Bipolar Disorder has to be kept as a closely guarded secret. Forget about your workplace, even otherwise it has to be a secret. If you tell somebody that you have a mental illness, people feel threatened. They think you might get violent or do something crazy which will put them in a spot. Mental Illness, even in this day and age is considered a taboo.
Do not tell your boyfriend that you have a mental disease. However sanely you have behaved in the past, it doesn't matter.. He will turn tail and run. I realize of course that if you have the intention of marrying him, you have to tell him the truth. and here's where the danger lies. Your disorder may be  well under control, you may be behaving normally so that he has no inkling of your disease, but that doesn't matter. With the exception of a few men who understand and love you. you will be rejected.
Don't talk about it. But a relative or a friend who stays over the night with you will be curious if they see you taking the medications in front of them. So hide the medicines as well. 
It is because of this that mental patients live in a state of denial. They will not even accept that they are ill. Even if they are behaving abnormally or are violent, they pass it off as aggravating circumstances. They might be seeing or hearing things that do not exist, bit they still refuse to accept their disease. They might go through years of suffering without any treatment.
Not only is the patient supposed to keep his affliction a secret, his family has to keep quiet as well. As if it is a thing to be ashamed of, a skeleton in the cupboard!
So don't mention it to anybody, don't say a word. It is a secret. Shhhhh-----!

Tremors.

I have Bipolar Disorder. I have to take medication for it. Unfortunately all these medications have side effects. My hands start trembling. So much so, that I can't lift a glassful of water without spilling half of it. It was time to pay a visit to my doctor.
The doctor was worried. The medicine was causing a serious physical disability. He didn't want to experiment on me. So he gave me a medicine to stop my tremors. The good news is that the medicine worked. The trembling stopped. I was able to write out a check. I was able to put on my eye make up.
But the med got me depressed all over again. I started crying for the slightest reasons. I was on Lithium which had caused the tremors, but had controlled my depression. Now that Lithium was discontinued, I went back to depression. It was neither as intense nor as longstanding as before, but it was there.
 The doctor had no alternative but ti prescribe an anti depressant. It got me out of my sadness, but made me 8 kgs heavier. So it was discontinued after some time but I am back into depression. I can neither lose weight nor get rid of my depression. My doctor has reassured me that the depression is temporary. It will settle down after sometime. I dearly hope so.

OUT CASTE.

Anybody with a mental illness has a challenge to deal with. For the poor and the illiterate this is an insurmountable challenge. Many times he and his surrounding family have no idea what in the hell is wrong. If he is behaving strangely,seeing or hearing things which are not there, has plunged into depression for no reason at all or seems ecstatic, for no reason at all, they are puzzled. Mental diseases have many other odd symptoms. On the whole a patient can make a terrible nuisance of himself.
In the initial stages everybody might try to help. The odd behavior may prompt his family to look for a doctor. The first doctor is generally a general physician. He may prescribe some medicines and give some counselling to the patient. Even if the patient is in need of psychiatric intervention, he may not encourage a visit to a psychiatrist or even a psychologist. Many people are convinced that psychiatrists give medicines that are too strong and which leave the patients numb and  doped.
So what's the solution. Leave the patient alone. He will recover in time.
When he doesn't, then the uneducated or the illiterate start finding other methods. They go to a witch doctor, convinced that the patient is possessed. The witch doctor tries to exorcise the demon and gets nowhere.. The poor can no longer support such a person. He is thrown out of the house.
Where does he go? He wonders around the streets, alone and forsaken. Soon the police are informed about him. They bundle him up and send him to a mental hospital. The living conditions in the hospital for the free patients are abysmal. The toilets are filthy, their beds full of lice and bed bugs and there are rats running around. The food is inedible
Sometimes the police pack the patients up in jail. Here they languish for years. Needless to say that these solutions fail to cure the patient. They are truly out caste.
These horror stories affect us but most of us can do nothing about them. These patients live in hell for no fault of theirs. Nobody wants them.
And yet there can be hope. There are rehab centers that helps these patients. They go regularly to such mental hospitals and even jails where they pick up the patients and brings them to their half way homes. Here the patients are treated for their illness free of cost. When they recover, they are sent back home. Even after they leave, medicines are provided to them free of cost.
India needs more of such rehab centers. If we recognize the mentally ill poor patient as a person in dire straits needing immediate attention, then we can make a difference. It is necessary for charitable organizations and NGOs to make this a priority.
Perhaps then these horror stories will have happy endings. 

MAD

"MAD" is a cruel and derogatory term, used by the layman to define a person with a Mental Disease. "Crazy, loony, bats in the belfry", are also very defaming and inhuman. Yet they are used time and again. I have a Bipolar Disorder. I have had my share of this adjective.
It is not my fault that my mind plays tricks on me. I have gone through long periods of acute and meaningless depression. There was no reason for it. Yet I felt as if my world had come to an end. I thought that I would be unable to even raise my arm. I attempted suicide many times because I hated myself. One day i would be fine, the next day i would plunge into excruciating pain which i thought would last forever. 
It didn't, but I was left weak and trembling, convinced that I was feeble and a coward.
"I have no will power," I told my psychiatrist. I suffered from a terrible inferiority complex till I was diagnosed a Bipolar patient.
Even in this enlightened age, a mental disease, though controllable is taboo. People are afraid to talk about it. They would rather go through months and years of intense torture, rather than speak about it. What a shame?!
You can't find employment if you have a mental illness which has become public. You are told by your doctors, not to mention it in your workplace. If it becomes apparent, your employer will not think twice before firing you. You may have been doing a good job, but that is not even considered. At least it was not with me.
Tell me, will an employee get fired simply because he has high blood pressure or diabetes? No of course not. Then why this discrimination? A mentally afflicted person, may have his disease under control, but he would still be afraid and embarrassed to talk about it.
A mentally diseased person can be a nuisance. They can become violent or destructive. But the solution does not lie in denouncing them. It is a disease, and it can be treated. Rejection can only make it worse. Take a mental patient to a doctor for God's sake.
Don't condemn a person because he is stark raving mad in your opinion. Your opinion really really doesn't count.