What's this about then?

“What is normal?”

It’s been a conversational comeback for many things over the years. Especially when openly discussing that you’ve been deemed, ‘not normal.’ In these open conversations we accepted that some of us have had interesting life experiences. These filter our adult perspectives and perhaps narrow views. There have been a number of people that I have met that have allowed for ‘not normal’ thoughts to grace their minds however people only reveal experiences where they have been labelled ‘ill’ when realising that they were in a safe space to share. 

"What is normal," has been one of my favourites phrases for years. For years I’ve known that I’ve haven’t been normal, I haven’t grown up in a normal Australian household and then I had to get treatment for the way my mind thought because, it also wasn’t normal.

Juxtaposing this disparity was also the association of what having a mental illness means admitting. It means admitting that there is something less than desirable about the way that you think. How your brain processes thoughts and how you cope? It can be life sentence, or it can be an opportunity for self discovery and personal growth. There is an assumption that people who need treatment for mental illnesses are severely unwell, ‘crazy’ or many other labels that I choose not to use.

I was confronted with many of these realisations when I was 17 and I first had to experience the stigma of going to hospital for my mind, because it was not normal. I went through a period of time where I advocated for better awareness and education about it, until I realised that I also didn’t want to associate with the illness for life. I was able to detach from identifying with the illness because I no longer needed treatment for it.

I didn’t realise what I powerful experience I had learnt, until I needed to do it again 15 years after the first episode ended. I had hoped I was one of those people that would only have mental illness affect them once in their life. Unfortunately not.
 

I wrote about my experience of the acute end of mental health treatment and the current state of community follow up. My experience the second time round was framed by my knowledge of what I know and expect of services, of how we respect and treat people experiencing similar journeys.  Yet, I didn't get that level of care and I could wear two hats in the experience I was having, of being a client and how I would be if I was the worker. 

This is story that I feel I now really need to tell: It is my story of ‘the road less travelled in depression recovery.’ 

I feel we really need to consider the long term treatment of depression because it is an illness that is growing and one that I feel then becomes too quickly reliant on antidepressants for a long time. The available psychotherapy is limited to ten sessions a year. So medication is the long term option. More and more are on medications for years. And many years later, if you are someone undiscerningly listening to your doctor, you are probably still taking them 4 or 14 or many years later.

I know what I’m saying is controversial. I know and acknowledge that medication is needed at times of crisis. I see how needed it is. I remember how needed it was for me in 1997 when I was 17 and again when I was 37.

I'm not saying don't take them, I'm saying we shouldn't be taking them for life. I don't think we are encouraged to get to a point of being told, "ok the medications were for a reprieve in dealing with those feelings at that time, why don't you try and now understand what there is to learn from that experience?" Instead when one tablet stops working we are told to try another one, expected to live on a merry go round of up and down side effects. We are told there is no cure, suppressing these symptoms is the best we can hope for. I don’t believe this is true.

I happened to bump into a lot of people that were in and out of hospitals and on medication for the whole 15 years I had between major episodes. In those 15 years I chose instead to go and process why I was depressed, instead of just hoping a tablet would fix those feelings for me. I did a lot of self work. I got to a point of no longer identifying with being depressed. I stopped talking about it because - why continue? It's not like admitting you've had a mental illness brings any advantage in any situation. I moved on.

What if I, years ago like so many other people I met in the adolescent wards of a psychiatric hospital, always listened to what I was told? Would I have been as medicated still all this time? That was the prognosis I was given, that I would be on medication for life. Would I have been able to do the work I have done, created community projects or impact the people I have met?  Would I have ever been able to learn from it, if I still thought it was a just a chemical imbalance they were fixing?

I had wanted to write about this when I was younger. I was supported and encouraged through the advocacy work I did. I couldn't find the words then. 

Maybe I needed this passage of time to see that the treatment hadn't changed, but I had without it. I had now twice, overcome the illness by moving through it instead of suppressing it.  Now I have to acknowledge this is my personal lived experience. Since coming back to work it is a story that has been enveloped in shame and stigma for me. In the face of all this talk about mental illness, I still find it easier to write about it.

I met people in hospital that had been medicated on depression meds for years. I'm talking specifically about depression. Do you know how this changes a person over the years? The weight gain, uncertainty and loss of self empowerment? The level of self responsibility it takes away? The morphing of drowsiness, personality and confidence it sapps from you?

Our Western system does not acknowledge that these states used to be revered in tribal communities. What if the way our health system works, is simply a matter of where we are born? Imagine the difference if we were told that the lessons we are experiencing would reveal themselves with an answer later. There is trauma, pain and hurt that so many of us have buried pill under pill under pill.

Sometimes there’s a reason buried trauma resurfaces in life. It forces us to re-evaluate ourselves. It does this in times of crisis, of nothing left to lose. It forces us to face up to what was a part of us left behind. Buried silent shame. My experience of being in a psych hospital is my silent shame. Because it labels me different. Of needing something to correct, a fixed range of acceptable feelings. Because talking about it means you're weird, strange and so many other labels. Because people still make comments about stereotypes that are wrong. The shame of it prevented me from talking about it for years.

My depression is deep. It is skewed, spiritual and philosophical. But I would rather understand and experience and integrate that part of me and my thinking, into how I see the world. It doesn’t serve me to not face up to these feelings. Or I can suppress them for years on a merry go round of different psych innovations always gracing the chemist shelves...  

The story I want to tell is how I managed to go through the episodes and years of depression comparing the years on medication, with the years off it. This is what I’ve learnt. This is what I want to share.