PAUL

PAUL
C 1998 JoJo

When our oldest son Paul turned seventeen, he started developing symptoms of mental illness. I wish I could say that up until then, he’d been a normal child, but unfortunately this wasn’t the case.
His birth had been difficult and fraught with complications. I should’ve had a Caesarean, but the obstetrician chose to use high forceps instead, to turn the baby in utero. I can remember how upset I was when I first saw Paul because his little head was bruised, squashed and misshapen.

“Babies skulls are flexible,” the doctor said nonchalantly. “In two or three days, you won’t see anything because the bones will have gone back to their proper place.”

This was my first baby – I believed the Doctor because I didn’t know any better.

Paul was slow in all areas of development. His talking was gibberish and he couldn’t sit still for even a minute. When he started school, it was determined he had several learning disabilities, the worst of which was severe attention deficit disorder. Paul couldn’t remember instructions or anything else for that matter. He also had mirror image and saw all his letters backwards. The school recommended he should be put into remedial teaching, and we agreed.

At age six, he was diagnosed as hyperactive. Ritalin was prescribed for him, and it certainly helped a great deal. But even at that age, he balked about taking pills at school every day. The other children would asked him why he was taking them, and rather than appear different, he started throwing them away.
Paul got through elementary school fairly well, following which my husband was transferred to Ontario. His high school years were a nightmare. By that time, he’d started manifesting outward signs of mental illness and was shunned and ostracised by his peers. They called him names, threw stones at him and refused to sit next to him in class. Throughout high school, he didn’t have one single friend. This total rejection by his peers was devastating. He became progressively more withdrawn from a world whose cruelty he wasn’t capable of understanding.

Come to that, I don’t understand it either. We teach our children reading, writing and arithmetic, but we don’t teach them kindness, and compassion for those unfortunate kids who, for one reason or another, are different. (There are a great many adults throughout society who carry deep scars from the physical and emotional abuse they suffered from their peers, throughout their school years – why is it allowed to go on?).
Having had to repeat several grades, Paul finally managed to graduate Grade 12 at the age of twenty one. As we watched him go up on stage to receive his diploma, I wept. People looked at me curiously, wondering why I was displaying so much emotion. They didn’t know what that piece of paper had cost my son.

Paul’s been under psychiatric care for the past fifteen years. We’ve watched his slow and inexorable deterioration over these years, always hoping that somehow, some day it can be reversed.

There are new wonder drugs that could help him – Paul refuses to take them. Thanks to the stupidity of the Mental Health Act, although he lacks the mental competence to realize what he’s doing, he can go on refusing to take medications and get progressively worse – and there’s not a thing we can do about it.

Mental illness is far more prevalent than most people realize. The reason it isn’t more evident is because most families of mentally sick individuals treat it as something shameful, and keep it well hidden. They go to extraordinary lengths to keep people ignorant that a family member has been afflicted by bi-polar, schizophrenia, depression or some other form of mental illness. I know several such families and I respect their wishes to keep their tragic circumstances a secret. That is, after all, their choice and they have every right in the world to make it. However, I long ago opted to come out of the closet so to speak, for several reasons.

I abhor society’s attitude towards the mentally sick; the dreadful jokes that proliferate about them, the lack of compassion, understanding and above all kindness towards them. The Mental Health Act infuriates me, and so does an uncaring Government which doesn’t provide sufficient funds to ensure them proper care and a decent standard of living. The Government doesn’t care because society doesn’t care.

In the name of economy, Provincial Governments have closed down institutions where mentally sick people have received the care they so desperately need, putting them out on the street. Mind you, they don’t call it that – they claim they’re integrating the mentally ill back into society. What utter rubbish – these poor souls are helpless individuals who are completely incapable of fending for themselves. For the most part, their families have long since abandoned them, and they have nowhere to go and no one to turn to. So they become homeless people, scavenging rubbish heaps, panhandling and living lives of confusion and quiet desperation. Tragically, few people care.

Paul has a family behind him who love him dearly and would always make sure he’s safe and well cared for. My heart aches for those who aren’t as fortunate.

These then are the reasons why I speak out about my son’s condition. If I were to feed into the public’s perception of mental illness by hiding him away and behaving as if I’m ashamed of him, then how could I expect others not to do the same? If there’s to be a change of attitude towards the mentally ill, it has to start with someone – and it might just as well be me.
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I sold the above article to The Montreal Gazette back in the late nineties. The day it came out in the newspaper, my phone didn’t stop ringing. My callers were men and women who suffered from one form or other of mental sickness, or they were parents of such victims. They were all desperately thankful that I’d written this article, saying that at last, someone understood their suffering, and had spoken out on their behalf. Many tears were shed on both ends of the telephones.

I spent 2 hours on the phone with one sobbing mother, who told me her mentally sick son had attempted suicide on numerous occasions, and she was terrified that one day he would succeed.

As a result of my article, I was invited to give talks about the plight of the mentally sick by the Lion’s Club, 4 H club and several others. During the question period after I had spoken, I was staggered by how many of my audience stood up to talk about a beloved family member who was mentally ill. They all said it was the first time they’d admitted in public that their family had endured this tragedy because believe me, it is a tragedy, and they all expressed what a relief it was to be able to share this, in an environment where it was safe to do so.

One such event stands out in my mind. A young man stood up and told us his mentally sick brother had committed suicide. He burst into tears and was immediately surrounded by a host of arms, hugging and comforting him.

Today Paul is middle aged. He lives in a home where he’s well looked after and has settled there very well. He comes home for weekends when he wants to, which isn’t often. He’s completely dysfunctional, talks to no one, and lives in his own little world. We love him dearly and do all we can for him.

No one who hasn’t actually experienced this can possibly understand how terribly the mentally ill suffer – and so do their families.