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Unravel: To Unwell and Back
Până la Greg Ralls
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Începeți să citițiLungime: 137 pagini2 ore
- Editor:
- BookBaby
- Lansat:
- Sep 5, 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781925515909
- Format:
- Carte
Descriere
Mental illness can affect absolutely anybody, with its causes often mysterious and perplexing.
In this highly readable memoir, Greg Ralls charts his own formative life experiences from work-related fatigue, trauma and hearing ‘voices’ (thoughts) through to psychosis, a devastating diagnosis of schizophrenia, treatment, family support and recovery.
Making sense of a period of madness, this story shows how one might triumphantly emerge whole again following massive change and the ground-shaking disruption of being unwell.
This book is for readers with an interest in both the challenges of serious mental illness and the hope of mental health recovery.
In this highly readable memoir, Greg Ralls charts his own formative life experiences from work-related fatigue, trauma and hearing ‘voices’ (thoughts) through to psychosis, a devastating diagnosis of schizophrenia, treatment, family support and recovery.
Making sense of a period of madness, this story shows how one might triumphantly emerge whole again following massive change and the ground-shaking disruption of being unwell.
This book is for readers with an interest in both the challenges of serious mental illness and the hope of mental health recovery.
Informații despre carte
Unravel: To Unwell and Back
Până la Greg Ralls
Lungime: 137 pagini2 ore
Descriere
Mental illness can affect absolutely anybody, with its causes often mysterious and perplexing.
In this highly readable memoir, Greg Ralls charts his own formative life experiences from work-related fatigue, trauma and hearing ‘voices’ (thoughts) through to psychosis, a devastating diagnosis of schizophrenia, treatment, family support and recovery.
Making sense of a period of madness, this story shows how one might triumphantly emerge whole again following massive change and the ground-shaking disruption of being unwell.
This book is for readers with an interest in both the challenges of serious mental illness and the hope of mental health recovery.
In this highly readable memoir, Greg Ralls charts his own formative life experiences from work-related fatigue, trauma and hearing ‘voices’ (thoughts) through to psychosis, a devastating diagnosis of schizophrenia, treatment, family support and recovery.
Making sense of a period of madness, this story shows how one might triumphantly emerge whole again following massive change and the ground-shaking disruption of being unwell.
This book is for readers with an interest in both the challenges of serious mental illness and the hope of mental health recovery.
- Editor:
- BookBaby
- Lansat:
- Sep 5, 2013
- ISBN:
- 9781925515909
- Format:
- Carte
Despre autor
Legat de Unravel
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Unravel - Greg Ralls
author
Preface
Unravel: To Unwell and Back is a legacy of personal experience communicated with good intentions. It spans recollections from my childhood in the 1970s to adult life in the late 2000s, and deals partly with the subject of mental illness. The primary aim of this book is to reveal to family, friends and the wider public a journey from normality, prior to my late 20s, through a period of being distinctly unwell, and ultimately to recovery.
This is not a literary novel filled with clever words and flowery prose, with made-up recollections of sights, sounds, smells, feelings, emotions and conversations, nor is it a feel-good book of funny anecdotes. People with a penchant for vividly-described, romanticised life stories and those who love rapid-fire laugh-out-loud humour should perhaps stop reading – now! Read on, however, if you like straight-talking and facts.
A portion of this book is devoted to my early years. It was then that my character was forged and this period most informs my self-perception. I’m a high achiever; I have a competitive nature and am driven to be the best I can be. Nevertheless, I’ve largely led an unremarkable life. I’m interested in everyday and mundane things, and possess a fascination with celebrity and personal success. It may be that for the first two chapters readers are challenged by a chronology of factoids from my mental scrapbook of childhood memories, as I flit from one idea to another; however, this is me. The memories are integral to my being and personality.
My life and mind are not like yours. A lot of what I’ve written doesn’t relate to mental illness; I only became ill as an adult. My intent is for people to understand that being mentally unwell is not the be-all and end-all of life. Hidden is a message that it’s blessed to be ordinary. Being unwell is nevertheless the most interesting thing that has happened to me, and the narrative of it in the later chapters is, I feel, the most significant thing I have to offer. The rest of this preface is therefore about my illness.
I led a normal life until 1997. Then, as a recent university graduate, I had the misfortune to suffer a psychologically traumatic experience while working in remote bush. After the event no counselling or support was offered to me by my employer – this was possibly a sign of the times rather than deliberate neglect on their part. I was also harassed once by a co-worker, and later bullied in the workplace. Very little was done about the harassment. Witnesses to the bullying remained silent. My mental health deteriorated as a result of these things, over a period of about two years. The company then made me redundant.
In early 2000, living alone and unemployed, I had a mortgage and no way of paying it. Possessing no means of supporting myself beyond the short-term, I reached a point where I experienced acute first-episode psychosis. I was briefly admitted as an involuntary patient to a psychiatric institution in Perth, Western Australia. The initial diagnosis made upon discharge from hospital was of ‘acute schizophrenia-like psychotic disorder’. Several years later I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. It’s only relatively recently that I’ve come to accept I have something closely approximating or resembling the latter condition.
I’ve learned from extensive reading I’ve done since my temporary hospitalisation and subsequent diagnosis that two main systems are currently used by mental health professionals to diagnose paranoid schizophrenia: diagnoses are made in accordance with either ICD-10 or DSM-IV-TR (recently replaced by DSM-5) criteria. By my estimation, the signs I’ve shown, the symptoms I’ve had, and the duration of those symptoms don’t strictly satisfy the criteria of either system. For want of a better formal description, however, I’m happy to settle for a diagnosis of schizophrenia. If the systems are regarded merely as guidelines then my diagnosis is valid.
Ongoing treatment for my condition includes half-yearly consultations with a psychiatrist and taking prescribed atypical antipsychotic medication. These measures are effective for me. Delusions and hallucinations are thankfully non-existent. There are no voices in my head; in fact I’ve never heard voices, not even when I was undeniably ill.
Schizophrenia affects different people in different ways. I happen to be high-functioning, and exhibit no noticeable social and occupational impairment. I also lack cognitive deficits such as memory problems or an inability to perform thought tasks I once could – although little or no loss of neurocognitive function is typical of the paranoid schizophrenia subtype. Personal hygiene has never been a problem for me. Even at the peak of my illness I maintained my physical appearance.
Two things are remarkable to me about mental illness. The first involves the statistics reported by the Australian Government that about one in five people experience it in any given year and roughly half of us experience it at some stage in life. Second, hardly anybody I know talks openly about having a personal experience of it, much less writes about it.
I’m sharing my experience because I think it is plain silly not to. If mental health problems are so common, why hide them? Why not relate in simple words the unravelling of my mind? There’s also an important argument that bringing things into the open might help to de-stigmatise a condition that shouldn’t be a source of shame. With the support of family and close friends, as well as appropriate professional advice, the outcome for me has been positive. I can therefore do my bit to advocate understanding and compassion for those who either have been or who are currently ill, and fight against misconception, intolerance and discrimination.
Some people only ever have one episode of psychosis, as I’ve had. There’s no known cure for schizophrenia and relapse is always a possibility. Despite this, around twenty per cent of people recover completely from the disorder. It’s possible, although unlikely, that I’m one of the fortunate few to whom this applies.
Compliance with maintenance treatments recommended by mental health professionals increases the odds of remaining stable and symptom-free. In my case, taking teeny, tiny ten-milligram tablets of the drug Abilify once a day hands-down beats non-compliance and the risk of a return of symptoms or repeat psychotic episode. I learned this the hard way.
Denial of illness resulted for me in treatment non-adherence. This behaviour is not uncommon among people first experiencing mental health problems. For a long time I lacked insight into my condition. As far as those close to me knew, I was always compliant with treatment. The truth, however, was that I took medication sporadically almost from the moment I was released from hospital. As a result, I had continuing positive symptoms that varied in severity and duration whenever I was off medication. The symptoms typically disappeared whenever I resumed taking medication.
Nobody could convince me I needed long-term treatment. As obvious as it is to me now that I need preventative medication, it took years to achieve this realisation.
At the time of psychosis, I had a seemingly profound religious experience. I’m not an overly religious person, although I once read an English translation of the Koran and nowadays keep a copy of the Bible on my Android smartphone for occasional reference. My personal library contains several of the Dalai Lama’s books. Do I believe in God? Yes. Hopefully a certain portion of this book will make clear the reason why. Given that I was mentally ill when I had the solitary experience underpinning my belief, I’m willing to accept that some, if not most, readers will doubt the veracity of this part of my story.
Some of what I’ve included herein is fairly ‘out there’, as might be expected. Readers may question whether I’m embarrassed to share the information I have. The emphatic response to such a question is, no way! I was mentally unwell. I’ve tried to accurately convey this and portray my experience as it happened.
Being in remission, I’m technically no longer ill and therefore should have the capacity to faithfully describe events I lived through. I may have lost grip on reality for a period of time, but I never lost the ability to see, hear, feel, think, process and remember. The story in this book is told almost exclusively in my words and from my perspective. I’ve deliberately steered away from including information relayed informally to me by others about their perception of my behaviour during the times I was unwell. Brief extracts from an edited copy of records relating to hospital admissions have, however, been judiciously used. These records were obtained under Western Australia’s Freedom of Information Act 1992.
I’ve chosen to share personal information from hospital records publicly for two reasons: first for narrative effect, and second to inform the reader of certain clinical details about my condition.
The names of some people described in the following chapters have been fictionalised, for obvious reasons, while those of prominent public figures and people considered least likely to be offended by what I’ve written haven’t. Several place names have been changed.
Puss and Candy
He was a tall young man who kept his eyes closed for much of the interview. His affect was irritable and a little grandiose at times. His mood was euthymic. He denied suicidality. His speech showed marked formal thought disorder with circumstantiality, tangentiality and derailment at times. He demonstrated marked perseveration of single words, repeating words a dozen or more times. He appeared to be responding to psychotic stimuli…
– extract from Graylands Hospital Discharge Summary, 15 February 2000.
The Watergate Scandal, Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, and introduction of the world’s first scientific calculator all happened in 1972, the year I was born. My upbringing was typical for a child born in rural Australia; there were no early warning signs that I’d one day become mentally ill and psychotic. A traumatic work-related situation and workplace harassment and bullying, that triggered a progressive, debilitating decline in my mental state, were still years away, far ahead in the unforeseeable future…
***
I was raised in a small rural town named Willow Grove in the State of Victoria. My family – parents Ian and Elsie, and older brother Stuart – and I lived in a rented house built of green-painted weatherboard located on Main Road at the edge of town. The earliest fragmentary recollections I have are of sitting in a high chair at the kitchen table, being bathed in a concrete wash trough in the laundry, seeing a huge Huntsman spider on the wall in the outdoor wooden toilet, and Mum almost setting the house on fire once when ironing clothes.
My first childhood friend, Chris, lived in the house next door. We were mates from a young age and knew each other before starting kindergarten. Our dads worked together running a business distributing fuel for Caltex.
For a while, Chris’ family had a dog that I was afraid of. Each time I went next door to visit, the dog growled at me and seemed menacing. They had a swimming pool in their back yard that I almost drowned in once. Chris’ mum made French toast whenever
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