Wednesday 4 March 2015

It's ok to talk

Anon., staff member

Welcome to my first ever blog, I hope you can take something from my story. It is a very difficult story, but one with plenty of hope and a good enough ending. I am the mother of a young man with a quite a serious mental illness. It all happened when he was only 16yrs of age. Let me introduce him, he is tall, dark and very handsome. He has the most beautiful human nature and a beautiful mind. He is the eldest child in our family and highly intelligent. My son starting acting out and misbehaving at 16years of age and I assumed it was normal teenage behaviour. However as the months progressed he began to change into a very different person. He became addicted to cannabis and unfortunately suffered serious consequences ending in a lengthy stay in a psychiatric hospital. This story is about survival and how one can recover from a horrific and traumatic life event through talking.

My son hid his mental health problems for over a year. Like many other young people he didn’t want us to know or to worry. What young people forget is that often a mother/father/carer loves this person and will want to help in times of trouble. I am an adult, I have been around longer, I’ve experienced more and I’ve come through tough times too. I wanted to help him and I was able to help him. Yes, my heart was completely and utterly broken. However rather than being paralyzed by this terrible pain I needed to do something about it. The best thing I could do was to help my son. When he eventually told us he was having problems it was very late into the onset of his illness and unfortunately he had to be hospitalised. I need you to know, that it is so important to seek help early, it prevents more serious problems later. It’s okay to talk. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Those who want to help you can cope, helping is coping. If you don’t want to talk to a parent then chose someone you trust, someone who can help you or get you help. Just talk, please talk, start your recovery, and protect your future.

The day my son was hospitalized was a sad day for our family and a frightening day for him. He had just turned 17yrs and was not allowed to access juvenile services. Against his and our wishes he had to go to an adult psychiatric ward. I was not allowed to stay the night and I had to leave my son amongst a ward full of strangers. I found it the most difficult thing in my life to leave him, but I did. Simply because I knew he was safe. Safe was the most important issue for him at that time. You see my son had become paranoid and was trying to escape the country. God knows where he would have ended up or what could have happened to him. He was tall, strong and very determined yet on the other hand he was extremely vulnerable.

In the beginning we didn’t talk to anyone about what had happened. The shame we imposed on ourselves kept us silent. We were stuck, hiding from everyone, driving different routes, ignoring phone calls and telling lies. Why? We didn’t want others to think differently of us. It wasn’t long before we learnt we could not do this on our own. More importantly we learnt how stupid it was of us to care about what others thought. Those who cared for us appeared out of the woodwork. They came to support us and it was overwhelming. Those who didn’t care, didn’t appear and we never missed them. We started to talk and this released us from our silence and isolation. I talked to the professionals for personal help and help for my son. I talked mental health support groups, friends who had mental health problems and other parents. I talked to my partner and my family. I set about informing myself. I took parenting courses, devoured the internet, read academic journals, and I returned to education. I kept talking to get support, to give me strength, to give me any knowledge that I could use in helping my son recover. I spoke and asked for help when I was weak. It was never a worldwide broadcast; it was one on one support from all of those people who cared. If we kept silent no-one would have known what had happened to our son and our family. We would not have managed everything without any support and we could have possibly failed to help him recover.

It took some time before my son started to improve. He did not trust the professionals or anyone else for that matter. His paranoia was so strong it prevented him talking. The following months were horrendous, he would go missing from hospital, find a drug dealer and take cannabis which was exacerbating his illness. When he was missing his life was always in danger and at one stage he was presumed dead. He didn’t trust anyone and soon he stopped speaking to me. I continued to visit him every day. It was horrible to be rejected by my son but I felt I had to make an investment in our future relationship. After months of struggling in hospital, his consultant gave him an ultimatum. He would be allowed out of hospital on condition he stopped taking cannabis. He accepted and he stopped taking it. On the consultants advice he joined a small private support group and has never taken a drug since. I believe the support group was where my son learnt to talk. He also started talking to me again, it began with a very simple “hello Mam, how are you? I’m not sure anything can ever surpass the heartfelt relief I felt. He learnt to share his problems in the support group. While it wasn’t a place to support his diagnosed mental illness, it was instrumental in his recovery. It was a place where he could talk and he survived through talking.

We all learnt to talk and talking has helped us all recover. Talking to someone who will listen releases the heaviness of a problem. It is the first step to recovery. My son has a mental illness but talking has allowed him to value himself and his life.

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