For better (or for worse?) mental health care.

What being in it together can feel like.

Photo by Mariano Rivas on Unsplash

I experienced a head injury after an accident eight years ago and it triggered an episode of psychosis. This was a horrendous time because I became seized with a delusion that my husband was plotting to kill me. Nothing on this green earth could be further from the truth. My relationship with my husband is about as good as it gets. I can only guess that a prior trauma combined with my deepest fear to create a monster of biblical proportions in my psyche.

He had no idea what was going on in my head. First, after feeling mildly annoyed about a foolish off the cuff remark by my husband, instead of just ignoring it and dealing with it in my usual fair-minded way, (in my new insane mode) I (inexplicably) ran away to my parents’ house, where I hadn’t lived for 35 years (on foot) and changed my address to that one on all official documents. They dealt with this in their usual way.

This whole episode was as stressful as you can imagine, with the added terror that I honestly felt that none of these measures would be enough to prevent my impending death. I then began divorce proceedings, convincing the solicitor that the horrible threats I could hear in my head were real things that my husband had said about me. I was cold and sweaty, genuinely petrified, so perhaps she believed that what I was saying was the truth.

Meanwhile, I can’t begin to imagine how he actually felt when he opened those documents. He and another friend called the crisis team, which consisted of a lone crisis health professional who attempted to assess me on the driveway of my parents’ house. Ranting, and full of the genuine sincerity of a completely insane person, I told them I was just trying to escape from an unpleasant situation. Unsure, she backed down, the attempt at intervention having failed.

There were lots of other voices in addition to the dominant hysterical guy as well kinds of hallucinations and delusions over the course of this nine month long episode, the final three months of which were spent totally florid and alive with unusual thoughts and ideas. I spent a lot of time driving around seemingly aimlessly, using up a lot of my monthly household budget on random behaviours like this. “At rest” behaviour was often accompanied by dreamlike hallucinations that I don’t remember very well now.

I engaged in some overly defensive behaviours as well that didn’t make sense at the time. For example, I entered my name to take a higher level qualification in mathematics, to prove to the world I wasn’t stupid. Who was asking? I have no idea. I was in no fit state to be taking an exam. I could hardly concentrate. I sat it anyway, in an high school exam hall full of 18 year old classmates. Why? Who can say? I passed the first paper, failed the second by a couple of marks, and never sat the third because I had come to my senses in the meantime. No one knew what best to do for me next. Relief would come from a surprising breakthrough, however.

Distraught with the situation I believed was going on with my marriage, I went to my parents’ GP clinic and asked for something to help with the heartache and stress of separation and divorce. I was prescribed fluoxetine and the GP, not spotting any signs of psychosis, was happy to provide me with a clinically proven antidepressant.

I started on that, with no insight at the time that it was all a psychosis, despite having been through it all once before many years ago. I was convinced that all the voices and hallucinations were real all over again. Everything that I had ever learned about the condition had disappeared into the great blue yonder, as if everything I had ever learnt about the illness was inaccessible at that time.

Luckily for me, something strange was taking place in the busy circuits that were driving the illness. It was odd, looking back, because I had no insight -until I suddenly did. But the intrusive voices gradually softened and became less judgmental, and more reflective. The major dominant and frightening voice actually said, in a more apologetic tone, as it faded out, “I think I’m becoming a bit less controlling.” I find this line extraordinary. Where did I go when I was ill? I have no answers.

I did need the antidepressant as my mind recovered once again and I was faced with the fallout from my illness. I felt battered, hollowed out, and deeply ashamed by some of the crazier elements of my episode, even though it wasn’t my fault that I had triggered a psychosis. It was an accidental injury incurred on a fun day out on a family holiday. In a themed adventure kid’s park featuring multiple chutes etc, I went on an allegedly “suitable for everyone” water slide “experience”. Punch line: I landed awkwardly on my head and hit the concrete splash pool floor of a theme park water slide. The health and safety procedure involved being rushed into a sweltering poky office space, being sat on a plastic chair and prompted with some urgency to fill out a form excusing the park management from any potential harm caused to me five minutes before.

I was then given an ice pack. I was driven to A&E and having successfully tracked a medic’s finger back and forth in the air I was declared fit and healthy and not in need of any further treatment. Only problem was that on the way there a strange figure had come through a door into my head without warning announcing that this was a possession and that he was a reasonable man. After nine months unable to escape from this person I would beg to differ.

The aftermath of trying to explain the strange behaviour is hardest with acquaintances and strangers. Friends are easier to talk to afterwards, and those conversations can be a useful learning curve for them as to how to help you better in any future episodes you might suffer from. Better public health awareness around the trauma of psychosis might help to make this part easier.

When my psychotic mental fog cleared thanks to the action of the tablets, I packed my bag, thanked my parents for the stay, and drove away with no real explanation about the mental distance I had been at while I was staying with them. When I appeared back at home, saying that I had regained my sanity, my husband got overwhelmed and began to cry. I have never seen him cry before or since. We unpacked the whole painful thing a bit at a time. I thought I would be walking on eggshells for quite some time but I had underestimated his compassion for me.

He wasn’t hurt in his pride or sense of status at all by what I had done, instead he had been scared that I would do myself an injury before I could recover or hurt myself or the kids’ feelings as a result of my deluded thought processes. He was desperately worried and felt uncharacteristically helpless, not knowing what to do for the best to help me.

Seeing how he reacted to my illness showed an aspect of his character that made me love him more than before. He waited the bad time out and didn’t make things harder for me afterwards by going over and over all the ways in which I had hurt him during the whole episode of psychosis. (Girls, he’s mine already). This has, ultimately, cemented our bond with each other.

Trial by ordeal. What was the point of it? I’m at a loss to explain a single thing. It just happened that way. It started with a straightforward non-serious head contact with a cement floor at swimming pool and outdoor park on the Dorset coastline. I was just trying to get away from the stress of life and have some fun with my husband and children on a typical rainy family holiday in the United Kingdom. Why wouldn’t you go to a fun place like that on a hot and sunny day? We get hot and sunny days too sometimes. This was one such day in a reasonably good week weather wise (for British summertime).

One day, (maybe this year, or next), I’m going to go back there and do all the chutes again, especially the same one that enabled me to lose my mind completely, putting all of us in harm’s way for the best part of 2017. Why? Because that is how I (Sarah Hawkins) deal with things. But what if…….? I’ll tell you now. This time I shan’t be signing any d*** thing without a suite of lawyers present.

I’ll make them go on the ride as well. Then we’ll decide who the crazy one is.