Take a Stand Against
Stigma
Facts:
Story:
Proposal:
I would like you to meet Brad.
Brad suffers from OCD, Depression, and Psychosis. He started having mild symptoms of depression when he was in his teens. His family said he liked to sleep more than normal, but they didn’t really think much about it. They just chalked it up to being a teenager.
Brad started showing more severe signs of mental illness in his mid-twenties, about 6 years into his marriage. Brad started coming home from work and saying the most off the wall things. He would come home angry and throw his stuff around and yell at his family about nonsense that was going on in his head. He was having delusions. He would get angry at his wife and tell her things like, “You are out to get me.” “When I think about you all I get is this static.” “Why are you trying to get rid of me?” His wife couldn’t figure out what was going on.
As weeks went on the behavior escalated. Brad’s wife started dreading when Brad would come home. He would pound on the walls, slam doors, get in her face like he was going to hit her. She didn’t know what to do. The neighbors noticed his behavior, but his family didn’t and when she tried to talk to his family they refused to believe her and fought her about getting him psychiatric help. They would tell her, “Don’t you make him get on medication. Those kinds of medications are addictive and once you get on them you can’t get back off.” They would deny that anyone in their family could possibly be mentally ill. They treated it like it was some evil thing that psychiatrists made up to make money.
There has been a stigma out there about mental illness for years. Brad’s family aren’t the only ones who react this way as a result from the shame and embarrassment that come from this stigma. Today there are organizations out there trying to help break this stigma. In an article on goodtherapy.org it explains, “Not everyone who wishes to seek treatment is able to do so, and some barriers to treatment result from the stigma attached to certain mental health concerns. Some may believe, for example, that conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar are falsely associated with violence, which may heighten feelings of shame or discrimination and lead those experiencing them to avoid treatment.“ The article goes on to list organizations trying to help, such as, Mind Your Mind, See Me, Teenmentalhealth.org, Time to Change, and a few others.
The stigma surrounding mental illness made it difficult for Brad’s wife to get the support she needed to get him help. There came a point where Brad’s wife became nervous for her children. She finally sought out help from her church’s bishop. He had been seeing the strange behavior, but didn’t realize how bad it was. He suggested marriage counseling so that she had a way to get Brad in to see someone without putting him on the defense. Brad was willing to go because he thought his wife was the crazy one and that maybe he could get her some help.
The counselor quickly recognized Brad’s delusions and had him step out of the room while she addressed it with his wife and made suggestions about getting him some help. Next she had Brad’s wife leave the room and spoke to Brad individually. By the time they left she had convinced Brad to go talk to a psychiatrist for an evaluation.
Brad went to the psychiatrist, but when he left he was angry with his wife for making him follow through with the appointment and didn’t want to take the meds he had been prescribed. He kept saying, “I don’t need those. I’m fine.” But then in the next sentence he would start rambling on about how he was hurting people with his mind. He tried to convince her that he had mind power and that he could control people. She asked him if he liked feeling that way and he said, “No.” Then she said, “Okay so prove that you don’t need this medicine and that it isn’t going to help. Take it for one month. If you don’t feel better, then you can stop taking it. But if you don’t try it for at least one month and give it a chance I am leaving.” Brad grudgingly started the medicine.
After a month Brad was almost back to normal. His delusions for the most part were gone and he was functioning much better and getting along with people again. After 5 months of treatments and meds he was a happy functional person again. He was enjoying life again. One day he decided he didn’t need the medication anymore and he stopped taking them. He didn’t tell his wife.
Antidepressant and antipsychotic medicines have what the psychiatrist called a half-life. After he stopped taking them they continued to stay in his system and work for about a month, but then he got bad again. This time it was easier for his wife to convince him to get help and get back on his meds.
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Hopelessness
A cycle began after this. About every two to three years, Brad would decide he was better and didn’t need his meds anymore. He would stop taking them and the OCD thoughts and psychosis would start again and he would become very depressed and suicidal. He wouldn’t want to leave the house because he thought he was hurting everybody.
One time Brad had stopped taking his meds and he had to go to his brother’s wedding dinner. He realized he needed his meds and started taking them that day, but they take a month to take full effect. His OCD thoughts were making him so crazy he just wanted to drown them out. He took out his antipsychotic meds and took 4 of the pills instead of the one pill he was supposed to take thinking it would help him get through the dinner. Well at the dinner he started getting dizzy and not feeling well. Another brother, whom had just started medical school took Brad to the hospital, to the emergency department. There they gave him charcoal to help prevent his stomach from absorbing any more medicine and ruled it out as an accidental overdose. This was the first time his brother was made aware Brad was taking antipsychotics. He asked Brad about his condition and told him to follow his doctor’s advice. He reassured him that it takes courage to get help.
After another couple of years Brad again stopped taking his meds and became extremely depressed and tried to commit suicide. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital and treated. After that visit Brad stayed on his medication for about four years. He stopped taking his meds about three years ago and everything changed from there. His mental health declined immensely. His meds were no longer working. The psychiatrist kept trying different meds with only short term results. Brad could no longer hold a job. He kept getting fired either because he couldn’t function enough to do the job or because he was calling in sick so he could stay home and sleep his thoughts away.
Brad recently had another psychotic episode which landed him back in the hospital. The psychiatrists there decided he needed electroconvulsive therapy. With this they administer muscle relaxers and strap him down and send electrical currents through his head. Basically, they are giving him a type of seizure. Brad continues to receive these ECT’s every three weeks.
Brad feels like there is no hope. He wants to feel normal. He doesn’t want to take medication for the rest of his life. He doesn’t want to accept that he has a mental illness. Unfortunately, this is all too common. In an article by Joel L. Young, M.D., he talks about reasons people don’t take their medications. He said, “One study found that fifty-five percent of people who refuse to take their medication do so because they don’t believe they’re actually sick.”
He goes on to say that, “Mental illnesses carry a significant stigma, so it’s understandable that some people do not want to believe they’re mentally ill. Six percent of people with mental illness report that they avoid medication because they’re worried what others would think.”
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