Recently I answered a knocking at my front door. Nothing unusual maybe, but for two aspects. First of all, not so long ago, I would probably have had a crippling panic attack and not been able to answer the door due to a nervous breakdown. Secondly, it was 5 o’clock on a Sunday morning!
Thinking it was one of my brothers, who has turned up in the middle of the night before and who’d already paid an ‘out-of-the-blue’ visit (albeit at 8pm) only 3 days earlier, I reluctantly but calmly went to answer. It crossed my mind to take my now disused walking stick with me, but thought, “No, it’s my brother”.
With this assurance, I simply opened the door and in walked a complete stranger. In his early 20s, over 6 foot and with the appearance of a football thug, and quite clearly ‘off his head’ on something, he asked if someone called Adam was in. I gently tried to ease him back out of the door, explaining that he was in the wrong house, but he forcefully pushed me back and continued inside. (He asked me what I thought I was doing!)
Remembering the advice of the Police Community Support Officers when they visited Rosemount, I went outside. Before waking up my next door neighbour, a policeman, I continued to calmly ask him to leave, telling him that I have been seriously physically ill, and had suffered a nervous breakdown, to see if this would defuse the situation. Soon, he followed me outside, and after being asked to leave again, walked away, calling me a “crazy f***er”.
Excuse me? I have been through sheer hell in my life, with not only a long-term debilitating, near-fatal illness and its related complications, but with painful and fairly extreme family hardship and heartache piled on top of that. And although I’ve suffered mental health problems as a result, my mind has been so strong it has come through intact.
During the last few years I have received the help of mental health services, such as Rosemount Recovery Plus and a Cognitive Behaviour Therapist. I have also met so many fantastic people who have been friendly and supportive, and who show me again and again how talented, worthy and (in its positive sense) normal we all are despite just happening to have mental health issues, which are almost as many and as varied as ourselves.
With all this, I have made considerable progress in getting back to being able to live my life, now being a full time volunteer and being able to gain qualifications. I just need help getting my home cleaned up and repaired, which is currently being organised by the Primary Care Support Team.
My nocturnal visitor, however, is so mentally incapable that he puts himself in a position where he walks into a stranger’s home at 5 in the morning, and is so emotionally retarded that he becomes aggressive and abusive. Depending on my behaviour, or of course on anyone else whose house he might have chosen, he could have ended up anywhere between being dead or in hospital, to being in prison for trespass, assault or manslaughter or murder, being told that he requires psychiatric treatment.
Mental illness is just like any other illness: it is a normal part of life and we all experience it to different degrees and frequencies. I have long thought that those suffering the worst and most dangerous of these conditions, or to quote, most truly “crazy”, are those who are so ignorant that they try to convince themselves they are impervious to mental ill health, yet are so scared of the possibility that they throw up walls of denial and react with hostility and childish name-calling.
I know who I feel safer with.
Thinking it was one of my brothers, who has turned up in the middle of the night before and who’d already paid an ‘out-of-the-blue’ visit (albeit at 8pm) only 3 days earlier, I reluctantly but calmly went to answer. It crossed my mind to take my now disused walking stick with me, but thought, “No, it’s my brother”.
With this assurance, I simply opened the door and in walked a complete stranger. In his early 20s, over 6 foot and with the appearance of a football thug, and quite clearly ‘off his head’ on something, he asked if someone called Adam was in. I gently tried to ease him back out of the door, explaining that he was in the wrong house, but he forcefully pushed me back and continued inside. (He asked me what I thought I was doing!)
Remembering the advice of the Police Community Support Officers when they visited Rosemount, I went outside. Before waking up my next door neighbour, a policeman, I continued to calmly ask him to leave, telling him that I have been seriously physically ill, and had suffered a nervous breakdown, to see if this would defuse the situation. Soon, he followed me outside, and after being asked to leave again, walked away, calling me a “crazy f***er”.
Excuse me? I have been through sheer hell in my life, with not only a long-term debilitating, near-fatal illness and its related complications, but with painful and fairly extreme family hardship and heartache piled on top of that. And although I’ve suffered mental health problems as a result, my mind has been so strong it has come through intact.
During the last few years I have received the help of mental health services, such as Rosemount Recovery Plus and a Cognitive Behaviour Therapist. I have also met so many fantastic people who have been friendly and supportive, and who show me again and again how talented, worthy and (in its positive sense) normal we all are despite just happening to have mental health issues, which are almost as many and as varied as ourselves.
With all this, I have made considerable progress in getting back to being able to live my life, now being a full time volunteer and being able to gain qualifications. I just need help getting my home cleaned up and repaired, which is currently being organised by the Primary Care Support Team.
My nocturnal visitor, however, is so mentally incapable that he puts himself in a position where he walks into a stranger’s home at 5 in the morning, and is so emotionally retarded that he becomes aggressive and abusive. Depending on my behaviour, or of course on anyone else whose house he might have chosen, he could have ended up anywhere between being dead or in hospital, to being in prison for trespass, assault or manslaughter or murder, being told that he requires psychiatric treatment.
Mental illness is just like any other illness: it is a normal part of life and we all experience it to different degrees and frequencies. I have long thought that those suffering the worst and most dangerous of these conditions, or to quote, most truly “crazy”, are those who are so ignorant that they try to convince themselves they are impervious to mental ill health, yet are so scared of the possibility that they throw up walls of denial and react with hostility and childish name-calling.
I know who I feel safer with.
Service User
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