| 02 February 2008
If left untreated mental illness may kill you, but unlike cancer it has a cure. Suicide deaths make up more than 20% of deaths for males between 20 to 34 years. Similarly for females, suicide deaths comprise a much higher proportion of total deaths in younger age groups compared with older age groups. Over the total population in 2005 there were 1638 deaths from transport accidents and 2101 deaths from suicide. In the same year in the age bracket 15-24 there were 114 deaths from cancer and 290 deaths from suicide and the 25-34 bracket there were 250 deaths from cancer and 442 deaths from suicide. It is more prevalent than cancer and transport accidents and yet nobody will talk about it.
Mental illness is a disease of our cognitive centre, the brain. When the brain is not functioning correctly it is difficult to explain to a person that their brain has a disease and this is the problem. When you have a disease in another organ, you tell the brain that the liver has a disease and your brain actively fights the illness. What do you fight with when the illness is in your brain? You can't tell your liver that your brain is sick so that the liver can co-ordinate the recovery, your kidney can't maintain a positive outlook and make sure you take your medication. How do you fix a problem in a word document when your operating system doesn't work. The central processing unit that interprets and coordinates information for the whole body is not working making it difficult to rectify any problems.
A good analogy is when you are at a party and you are really drunk, the other people at the party can see how drunk you are and suggest that you go home, but you are so drunk that you cannot see this. It's not until you wake up the next day and sober up that you realise how drunk you were. It is often the same when you have a mental illness.
For many years I refused to get treatment because I thought that nothing was wrong and this was a normal part of growing up. But it wasn't normal for me to sit in a room with my mates and have my brain tell me, “Go into the kitchen, get a knife and gut the pricks.” It wasn't normal for me to have good cop/bad cop in my head day after day when I knew that I wasn't a violent person and of course, I didn't want to harm my friends. This was happening because I was suffering from Schizophrenia.
Through my work as a Zoologist, I have stood face to face with 7 foot female black bears whilst they defend their cubs, and netted 250kg bull seals, but I have never been as scared as I was during those times. When I was facing a bear I could control what I was doing, and therefore control the situation. During the worst times, I was fighting myself clinging to the slim control that kept me going.
If this continued for much longer I would most likely have lost control, lost my life and possibly destroyed the lives of so many people. Instead, I sought help; I changed my life and cured the illness that was growing inside my brain. I now understand that I was unwell, that I had an illness, and if you speak to anyone who has experienced this, they will tell you it's an illness and it's curable.
The years of treatment were tough, very tough at times, but I had support and was determined to get my life back on track. Along the way I managed to finish my Science Degree with First Class Honours. I gained entry into a PhD program at Melbourne Uni and am now working as an environmental consultant. I was recently engaged to the most wonderful woman I have ever met and have never been happier.
My hope is that in the future, people in my situation will not have to endure the suffering I did, that they can get treatment earlier and not lose years of their life. But, this experience has made me who I am and I wouldn't change a thing. From my experience I can tell you that at the other end if you make the tough decisions and stick to your treatment you can, and will, lead a successful and happy life. When I think what the other side of the coin looks like, if I hadn't got treatment, I know that I wouldn't be here. But with medication and support - despite the stigma - I made it through.
Why does no-one talk about this illness and why are people afraid to admit that they have it?
Why do situations need to get to an irreversible stage where someone takes their life or ends up in the emergency room before they get help?
It is because of the way that society views this illness. It's seen as a weakness, but it's not. You're seen as crazy, but your not. You're seen to have brought this on yourself, but you didn't. Therefore, because everyone is afraid to speak openly and the subject is never raised, you think you're the only person in the world dealing with mental illness. You must suffer in silence for fear of social persecution and because no-one understands. When I was getting treatment I thought that I was the only 24 year old male dealing with schizophrenia in the country. If people can see that countless others are in the same situation, countless others know what you're dealing with because they are dealing with the same thing then we can move this illness out of the closest and into the mainstream. If we make mental illness part of everyday health and education, then treatment and recovery will be so much faster, more accessible and part of everyday life.
The main goal of PeopleLikeYou is to dispel the belief that you must deal with this alone, that you can't tell anyone or that no-one will understand. No-one should be ashamed to have a mental illness, or feel that no-one will understand, because there are thousands of people out there dealing with the same issues. I know this because every time I mention this site, someone tells me about their mental illness, or how they have dealt with friends or family with mental illness, or have lost people as a result of mental illness. You feel comfortable talking, when you're talking with people like you.
Peoplelikeyou.com.au is here to show you that there are thousands upon thousands of average everyday people out there dealing with this illness. People that are not weak, people that are not crazy and people that did not bring this on themselves. They are people with an illness, a curable illness, they are people in similar situations, with similar issues that need support and understanding.
You will soon see that the world is full of people like you.
