Mental health: A personal tragedy, a universal connection
I have sometimes described myself, mostly jokingly, as someone who is sensitive to the realities of existence.
The universe, the stars, our planet and its orbit around the sun, its daily rotation that yields night and day. My body — where did it come from? What is time? And like the Fairport Convention song, who knows where the time goes?
At some point or another, all these things have made me feel like I was losing my mind, and I've sometimes wondered: is this what being schizophrenic feels like?
Of course it is not.
This month marks six years since my brother passed away.
On Dec. 21, 2008, he and his best friend were riding an ATV around suppertime when they veered off of a cliff in Upper Island Cove. They landed somewhere at the bottom of a 90-foot gulch into the stormy Atlantic Ocean, never to be seen or heard from again.
To this day, I wonder if I or someone in my family might have been classified for a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of what happened that day.
I did not; to my knowledge, no one in the family did.
Thinking about mental health
Growing up, I can remember that weeks before boarding a plane, I would flick my bedroom light switch on and off, on-off-on-again. Or, I would flip my bed's comforter from one side to the other and back again, many times, hoping that it would somehow enable me, and the plane, to get to our destination safely.
I don't know where this habit came from. I was maybe seven years old at the time. I'm still here, and I have travelled far and wide since. The planes obviously all made it.
It's a weird habit that I have long since grown out of, but as a youngster, I was trapped in a spiral of something that I guess might have been deemed as obsessive compulsiveness.
But that's not what it was.
Then there are mornings while walking to work — and for what could be any number of reasons — when my chest is tight and my thoughts are rapid, taken by a rationally irrational set of worries that I'm certain would lend themselves to a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder.
That diagnosis has never been made.
I've never needed medication, I've told myself. I've never taken anything prescribed to me. Should I have?
My answer is no.
The good, calm and neutral times of life are more relaxing than any thought about our existence, more meaningful than any life-altering event, and more powerful than any irrational worry or underlying reason that fuels a cold sweat or an anxious mind.
I am now 27, and so far I have been able to grapple and control all the times in my life when my thoughts seemed to be anything but in control.
But what about those who have been unable to grapple and control their thoughts?
Some concerning trends
Numbers from the Newfoundland & Labrador Centre for Health Information show a steady increase in the number of people in the province who have had to actually make their way to their nearest hospital.
They make their way to the Captain William Jackman Memorial, or Western Regional Memorial, or James Paton Memorial, or Carbonear General, or the Health Sciences Centre.
They make their way to any of the province's hospitals because the weight of their thoughts and their experiences are simply too much for the circuitry of their mind to handle.
There is more going on.
I spoke with a colleague whose opinion I value immensely. We agreed that it is often amazing how when you go looking for numbers — not really knowing what you are looking for — that you end up seeing trends that stick out prominently.
Here's some of what I find when I went looking for numbers on mental health.
Last year, 5,947 people in Newfoundland and Labrador were hospitalized with a mental disorder diagnosis. That's a 10-year high.
Last year, 337 people in Newfoundland and Labrador were hospitalized with schizophrenia. That is also a 10-year high.
Last year, 589 people in Newfoundland and Labrador were hospitalized with anxiety disorder. Again, a 10-year high.
Between 2010 to 2013, 128 people in Newfoundland and Labrador were hospitalized with Obsessive Compulsive Behaviour. Now, that happened to be a 10-year low.
Between 2010 to 2013, 337 people in Newfoundland and Labrador were hospitalized with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Also a 10-year low.
While hospitalizations for people with PTSD and OCD have taken a dip, they remain fairly constant over 10 years. The hospitalizations for anxiety, schizophrenia and mental disorders overall — well, they are at the highest they've been in a decade.
Could the upward swing in numbers be because like many of us have noticed, as a society we are speaking more about the circumstances surrounding mental health? More people are seeking help because more people are talking out loud about how they are living?
The largest piece of the iceberg
These numbers only represent those who have went in search for some form of hospital help. They're now a documented piece of medical history.
The part of the iceberg underwater always represents the largest portion.
In this case it's the number of people living without medical help that is much larger. Those who don't make their way to a hospital or a psychiatrist, or those who don't fill that prescription for their 'mental health.' The number of people who experience a strain on their mentality and don't seek 'help,' without doubt much larger than those who do.
People need help but, but what's helping for an individual varies from person-to-person.
Some head to the doctor. Others help themselves and are helped by those around them. Some are a mix of both.
A prescription in my pocket
Since my brother's death I've had a prescription, folded in my wallet, for some sort of anti-anxiety pill.
It's been six years since he passed on and I have yet had to have that prescription filled.
Will I ever? I think it's expired now.
But for 5,947 people in the province, part of their medication involved that not-so-simple trip to the hospital last year, in order to tell the nurse or the doctor what was really going on.
It's the fine line between taking your medication and not taking your medication, between seeking help and not.
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