Start At The Beginning of Stigma
I need to make an admission of guilt regarding stigma in relation to past opinions on mental health, considering I see myself an advocate.
So picture this scenario - me, sixteen, work experience, 2 weeks, mental hospital, no choice, $15 for the privilege. We had two separate stints of work experience. My first foray into the working world was at a local pub (can you deal with that) doing duties akin to my chores at home. Yuck!
I had to choose a different venture for the second adventure into the world of pretend work, and given my procrastination I was without control edged into chasing the nursing experience at the local ‘asylum’! That being the collection of white buildings looming large over our community, both physically and negatively. It mattered not that two aunts had worked their lives there and survived for years (well actually one of them died there, off duty, and is a story for another day). I did not know if they went in to battle all day every day, but I conjured the worst for myself. I was angry at my assignment and not one person could or would intervene. My level of angst was palpable and built up to a crescendo by the time my first day rolled around! I am sure I envisaged what every uninitiated soul imagined when discussing this infamous white building and the imagined chaos, destruction and behavior that ‘occurred’ within those walls. I was polite of course and then strangely or-perhaps inevitably that placement led to a career. How wrong could my adolescent mind have been? At the conclusion of week one I had concluded I would/should work there, and within six months I crossed the threshold into a life working with the most unfortunate members of our world. Stigma had crippled my belief system due to a lack of insight. All that I had imagined was markedly diminished and with the power of knowledge, understanding and empathy most situations were then and are now managed well. Assaults then occurred far less than society believed with availability of medication, systems of management & implementation of specific guidelines to manage onset of adverse behaviors. From day one, I advocated for the mentally challenged and endeavored to educate the uninitiated & uncaring in our society. For three decades I worked with people experiencing profound psychological distress. I advocated for them and supported their recovery. I thought I understood mental illness.
And then, one day it happened to me!
A psychotic break!
It came like a rupture in the fabric of who I thought I was. Even with all my knowledge and experience I could not process or accept it. Part of me believed this happened only to others. Not some one who spent decades ‘on the other side’.
That, I realized later was another form of stigma. Subtle. Ingrained. Unspoken.
Following decades in the ’business’ I required intervention and admission to a mental health facility. My thought processes could not reconcile my role as a mental health professional with the role of a consumer in the throes of a psychotic break. That was not the journey supposed to happen for me. Like this presentation was beyond my scope. It couldn’t/shouldn’t happen in MY brain. I am a mental health nurse! Yet again I was guilty of stigma!
This blog is an attempt to unpack a journey and face biases I did not know I had. I need to speak honestly about what it means to move from observer to experiencer - from professional to patient - and back again! If you have ever struggled with reconciling your own vulnerabilities or wrestled with the quiet shame of being human in a world that prefers labels, I hope you will walk with me through this!
