Thursday, September 22, 2011

Mental health.

There was a tough decision to be made this week.
None of my business you might say but I felt that a moments intervention might avert a disaster.

There are a lot of mentally ill people going around this city. In Fairview there is a large mental hospital which provides day care and full residential care.
They are often seen by their minders being taken for walks around Fairview park.
Many are happy and docile others can be way out of control.

So I come back to my dilemma.
A girl who lives not far from my house suffers from schizophrenia, she is on the higher scale in severity of her illness.
Well I saw her throwing up on the grass on Sunday morning as I went for the paper.
I thought straight away "morning sickness".
What should I do?

I mulled it around for a few days and then I saw her father pulling in at the house, so I stopped and went over. The way I put it to him was that she might be vomiting up her medication and just to keep an eye on her.
He thanked me for my observation and said that they would keep an eve on her for a few days.
The poor man then gave me a brief synopsis on what it is like living with her.
It is a very difficult situation all round, she is not attending a day care center and her life is not structured in any way, so she is decking by the year.

She is really good looking and the thoughts of some scumbag taking advantage of her mental state to have sex with her really upsets me. You have to take into account that she cannot make a rational decision for herself.

Getting back to the state of mental health.
I know someone who is suffering from severe paranoia, she has cameras and alarms all over the house. "No they have come in and they have taken away my papers, everything has been moved around. No they have a way of interfering with the CCTV footage" So it goes on for the past number of years.
A doctor cannot sign anyone into a mental hospital against their wishes. So she is going nowhere and will not admit that there is any problem.
The result of all this will be that she will either have a complete breakdown or she will die by her own hand, she lives alone.
One thing about this lady is that she was a wonderful painter, her paintings would sell for good money. She can't paint now at all.

On the other hand a woman was found stabbed to death in the midlands a few days ago. It turns out that her mentally ill son had knifed her to death. He had been refusing to take his medication.

It all makes me thankful for the little bit of sanity that I hold on to and the ability to laugh off the troubles of the world.

Another good idea is to listen to Lyric FM during the morning and Ray Darcy on today FM.
That RTE with all their doom and gloom just causes anger and stress.

Here is a good website to find help. http://www.mentalhealthireland.ie/finding-support

I just thought I would share this with you in the hope that you might be a bit kinder to your fellow man.

2 comments:

  1. Hey John,
    Interesting post as always.
    Keep up the blog, I love reading it

    Richie
    .

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  2. I am way behind reading your blog. Always interesting. Just now read the one about mental illness. I have known 3 men and 1 woman who were manic-depressive (easier to spell!). I knew the woman only slightly but she seemed to stay on her meds. One man could not work, lived with his mother, had a terrible temper, played guitar beautifully. I took him home from playing music one night at a little shop - scared me when another driver did something stupid. Another man was about 50, happily married, 2 teenage children, was a part time chaplain at a hospital, told me he KNEW he could never stop taking his meds. And the other man? About my sons age, worked full time, did some car repairs for me, attended worship where I did, got off his meds - got mad at me - and burned down my house while I was at work. That was November 16, 1989 and I can still picture it in my mind.

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