So, Things Are Getting Out of Control. This is How You Get Help and Get Through it

A lot more people are struggling with a mental disorder than you realize, and finding a way through the darkness can be incredibly daunting

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The first question a lot of people ask when they are experiencing poor mental health is, “Am I crazy?” I’m here to tell you that you aren’t and guide you on a path back to who you were the whole time.

One of my first serious battles with mental illness happened around the same time as a close friend, Brad Latta, of St.Albert, Alberta ended his own life and devastated the lives of so many others in doing so. I don’t blame Brad, he had been betrayed by a close friend and anyone who knows something about mental health would have called Brad a person with bipolar disorder. He would talk a lot about a woman named Bobby who was his girlfriend but had broken up with him, leaving him a wreck. Then there were the manic times when Brad was the main source of energy at a parties he often hosted in his mom’s house. We were all just kids. I was 17, Brad was 18. We were way too young to make major decisions based on our emotions.

Brad’s death hit me hard. And at the time, I wasn’t in the best mental state. I was suffering from severe depression, accented by bouts of mania, often when I drank alcohol. This was an ailment I believe I shared with Brad. But my situation got even worse.

In addition to the trauma and stress of losing a close friend, I wasn’t getting along welll with a few people. The worst of these situations was my relationship with my dad, may he rest in peace. At the time, he was a daily drinker and we clashed on just about everything. At the time, I was also being heavily influenced by my sister and her boyfriend who were far left socialists and were constantly tearing down all the foundations of respect and knowledge I had gained at that age. They taught me to hate everything, and to give up on trying to take care of my self and they also made me out to be some kind of monster when it came to money. I worked hard and had a little money which I used to buy a car and a motorcycle and a few other things but according to them, this was materialism and fascism. Somehow it was also selfishness and exploitation to work hard, earn and save money no one else was entitled to. All these factors came together and my bipolar disorder started to morph into most likely schizoaffective disorder, which is symptoms of schizophrenia and symptoms of bipolar.

I do want to make it clear. It wasn’t my dad’s fault that I became ill. My sister, who I know loved me, was not to blame either. I did have some problems with how her boyfriend treated me before and after my psychotic break, but even he wasn’t to blame. The stress I went through and the pain and trauma were a trigger to a predisposition for me to suffer from mental illness.

A lot of people may take a hard look at themselves and discover they are troubled and are worried they are different from others in their thought patterns, moods, or perceptions of the world around them, and they want to get help. The sad truth is, few know the process of getting help. This is what I want the focus of today’s blog post to cover.

I think what the initial stages of mental illness need to be ranked by to find out what level of care you may need, is different for each person experiencing it. You may become aware that you do things like check the door lock 15 times before finally leaving the house, then drive home at lunch to make sure you didn’t leave the stove on, all the while thinking you were going to come home to discover your house had burned to the ground. If you experience these symptoms, and you decide that your actions are greatly affecting your daily life, you need to reach out.

I don’t have anywhere near enough time to describe all mental illnesses, but what I can do is share what I know from my own experience. For example, if you have symptoms like in the previous paragraph, you may have a lengthy wait to talk to someone who is qualified to give advice and prescribe medication. Your first contact is your family doctor. Try to write out a one-page summary of the behavior you are concerned about. Your doctor may have enough experience with psychiatry to prescribe you with something to help the situation, anything from anti-anxiety medication to anti-depressants and other chemical therapies. But eventually you will want to see a psychiatrist, preferrably even a psychiatrist who specializes in what your family doctor believes will be the most helpful.

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The difficult part of this situation is that referrals to a psychiatrist can take a long time when you go this route. I have heard of people waiting six months to a year to talk to someone who can empathize, understand, and support you in dealing with it, along with deciding on your best course of treatment. In my brother’s case, I had been talking to him and was starting to think that he may be struggling with delusional thoughts. What I didn’t know was that under the surface there was this and a lot more going on. Instead of suggesting he get a referral, what I did was simply brought him to my next appointment with my own psychiatrist and saved him what I believe was a lot of time and grief.

When you or a loved one is experiencing symptoms of mental illness, it is a good time to start looking around for people you know who can recommend a good psychiatrist. I should make a few things clear here, some of the major mental illnesses are depression, bipolar, where you have dangerously low and uncontrollably high moods, schizophrenia, where you may experience a loss of contact with reality, where you lose your social skills, lose your ambition, isolate and have difficulty with personal hygeine, along with hallucinations, which can be false sensory input of any of the five senses. You may also have grandiose delusional ideas that your hallucinations help completely convince you of, and paranoia. None of these are a complete list of the symptoms, there are many more disorders than this, and all of these can cross over and be parts of other illnesses. You can have depression with psychosis, you can have schizophrenia with obsessive compulsive disorder. The important thing is to keep a personal record of what you experience and be able to tell a team of professional mental health caregivers so they can work out a treatment plan. I have heard many professionals speak on the benefits of keeping a ‘wellness journal’ where you write down the date and a 1-10 rating of how you feel, then open up to your journal as to what you are going through. This helps you and can help get you the care you need. If you prefer not to type out your journal and don’t want to handwrite it, most smart phones have record features on them which you can use to record and perhaps later document your situation.

Young people have a few advantages over people who are in their 30s or later, for many reasons. One of them is that if a young person starts to develop signs of poor mental health, and they get help, their outcomes are often much better than would exist for a person who didn’t get treatment for years. Illnesses like schizophrenia can actually cause permanent brain damage when left untreated. There are two excellent sources of help that should exist in most major urban centres. One of them would be the counsellor at their school if they are in high school, and in a university or college setting, there should be student services. This first line of defense against a young person going without treatment has two facets to it. The first is that a counsellor/therapist can refer the young person to places like an early psychosis intervention clinic which is the second source of help, and also the student may be able to connect with a psychologist or therapist and go through formal therapy. There are numerous forms of mental health therapy, to my understanding in the event of a person experiencing psychosis (delusions, hallucinations, paranoia) the best type of therapy is believed to be Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. I have read that counselling can be critical and that in some cases, therapy alone (without medication) has even better results than medication alone (prescriptions, not therapy).

One of the difficult situations in my case was, my illness actually was the cause of getting me kicked out of school and not being able to attend university or college. This meant I wasn’t covered for a therapist and I didn’t have the benefit of the advice and wisdom of someone experienced in helping people with mental health concerns. If I could somehow stop time I would go back to about 3 months before I became seriously ill and convince myself to march into my school counsellor’s office and explain the things I was going through. Of course this is impossible, but I feel it is valid advice for someone going through the devastating experience of watching someone you care about decompensating and sort of just slipping away from the person you knew.

So what does a person do if they are too old for an early psychosis intervention program or if they are not in school and without work coverage for mental health? I think one of the top things that should happen is that the person experiencing mental illness should not live alone. When someone has bipolar, depression, schizophrenia, they are at great risk (as many as 50% of the people with mental health concerns are in this group) of attempting suicide. I don’t know the statistics for all mental illnesses, but I do know that with schizophrenia, 10% of people who have it do manage to kill themselves. I also know that one of the common denominators of these suicide attempts is isolation. If at all possible, a young person with a mental illness should live with at least one family member, be in a group home if that isn’t possible, or have a roommate. Of course, being married can be a great alternative to living alone, but it is somewhat more rare for people with some mental illnesses to have stable marriages.

So, the person lives with a roommate lets say, and the roommate has been made aware of the person’s special needs such as medication, and a direct line to medical/psychiatric care in case of crisis. This is where the dehumanizing line comes in. If you go to your family doctor to get a referral, you must suffer for a long time before seeing one. But if you are treated in a hospital, you will see one right away and a lot more treatment can occur because all the needs such as CAT scan clinics, occupational therapy resources just to name a few, exist in a hospital. But in so many situations, you have to be a clear danger to yourself or others to be admitted to a hospital. I have been in situations where I knew about some types of symptoms that indicate you need help and I told an emergency room doctor about them who agreed I should be admitted. Someone must have seen through my ruse though because I wasn’t admitted and ended up having to walk a long way home now knowing how I would ever get out of the cycle of welfare apartments and emergency rooms.

So, in truth, in some ways, a mental health crisis can be a good thing. One thing I recommend when a person has agreed to be a roommate for someone with mental health issues is for that roommate to take a course in mental health first aid. This is something I want to do, but have put it off. I also feel this should be paid for by the health care system/health insurance but what will often happen is the cost will be borne by the family of the person with the illness. I can’t express enough confusion over the health care system in the US. It seems the health care system is better, but treatment for even one illness can be financially devastating to a family, and in my own case people in my family had a number of problems of which any could have caused severe financial hardship. If you live in the US, and a family member has any mental health concerns, get the best insurance you can, read the contract with a microscope before signing, and get out and hustle to make as much money as you can and save as much of it as you can because you just may need it. I was apalled to learn from my sister about how her mother-in-law (her husband was a wealthy doctor) became ill on a trip to New York and the medical bills soon became astronomical. If she had proper insurance or if that hadn’t happened, my sister and her husband would have been set for life. Now they are at retirement age and not able to retire until they pay down more debts and put my niece through university.

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So, what can a person expect if they end up calling an ambulance (or not) and end up in an emergency room. Once again you will be put on a list to wait. I can recall a time when I was seriously ill and needed a medication change and I think before I was even taken into an examination room, 17 hours went by. I often recommend that if you may need to go to a hospital emergency, keep a bag with items such as a book to read, a non-perishable snack and anything you may need to get comfortable. Unfortunately if you do this and need an ambulance to take you to the hospital, often paramedics will be ticked off and assume you are playing games with the mental health system. I do hold the belief that if at all possible, you should see a psychiatrist or mental health practitioner at their office, this isn’t always possible. I have a friend who lives in my building who was insulted by a paramedic who claimed he had only called an ambulance to have access to heavy painkillers, and he sued and won the case.

Surviving an emergency room visit can be difficult, especially when you may be hearing voices, experiencing delusional thinking or paranoia. It can be important to make a pact with someone, possibly even a friend who has a similar illness, to agree to wait with you if you ever need to go to the emergency room if you promise to do the same for them. Things go so much better when someone you know well is there to help calm you, and maybe even to explain your specific individual needs and reasons for the hospital visit. At that point, not much has been done. You may be admitted, you may not. If you are not admitted, ask the doctor you spoke to about options to get your own psychiatrist if you are still waiting on a list to see one. If you are admitted, you will see a psychiatrist or intern who works at that hospital and you won’t be discharged before connecting with your own psychiatrist or being taken on as a patient by one of the hospital doctors.

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There was a situation I was in where I had been prescribed a medication that wasn’t covered by my provincial government funded health insurance. Things got so bad I went to the emergency, and an older doctor came to see me. I was extremely depressed, but kept a positive outlook and I think the doctor respected that. I also brought a list of my medications, which made his job much easier. I told him about the medication and I honestly believe he made some phone calls to some powerful people because the very next day my pharmacist told me the medication I needed was now covered under my insurance.

Surviving a hospital stay is not impossible, but it can be difficult. One thing is for sure, if you experience psychosis and have never been given medication for it you are in for a whopper of a surprise. Most anti-psychotic medications will sedate you and tranquilize you to some extent, some more than others. Soon, you can experience extreme hunger and feel you need to eat and snack and eat some more. It is common to gain weight, which often makes it common to develop diabetes. If you experience extreme hunger, tell your doctor about it. There is a medication for diabetes called Metformin which can help people on anti-psychotics want to eat less and it counteracts the human body’s tendency to have a slower metabolism when the owner of the body is being given anti-depressants. There is also an option that was popular with actors called Ozempic. I was offered this medication since I have type two diabetes and it would have slimmed me down but I didn’t like what I had heard about its side effects.

So there it is. First, seek out resources that will allow you to speak to a counsellor, a school or work psychologist, and get referred to see a psychiatrist and/or an early psychosis intervention program (for youth). If your situation becomes dire and you can’t wait the extreme amount of time it often takes to see a psychiatrist, consider going to emergency or if you know someone who sees a good psychiatrist, try and get them to let you see their doctor. I have also heard that if you are on a waiting list, it can be best to call each monday and friday to ask about cancellations. These are the days when cancellations most often occur. Then you need to navigate a hospital stay. Something I didn’t mention is, most hospital inpatient programs include classes on managing diet, work, family, exercise. It is so important to fill your day up and take full advantage of resources offered. When you are ready to leave the hospital, remember that is isn’t good to live alone, but unfortunately it isn’t good to become roommates with people you meet in the hospital. Some of them may be more ill than you are, yet because you have that common bond of being an inpatient at the same time they seem trustworthy. Remember that a roommate can take major advantage of a vulnerable person, then take off and even if you go to the hospital they will be unable to give any information as to where the person is now, or even their full name.

Do your best to get a roommate, one idea that I liked was to put a notice up at a university bulletin board in the psychology department asking for a roommate. You could even state that you will share more than half the rent in exchange for the stability and assistance a psychology student could bring to your home.

Wow, that was a lengthy one. I’m glad you read this far. I just want to say that a mental health diagnosis is not a death sentence. I once spent six months in a hospital which was absolutely the worst time of my life. Years later, I had established a career as a writer and teacher and went back to the same place and was paid well as an employee, doing what I love, helping support people to get their lives back after experiencing a mental illness.