On a teachers’ college drama
tour in 1975 a now well-known playwright tells me she thought I was the sanest
person she had met, then recants, but doesn’t tell me why. I still don’t know
why she even saw fit to say anything about my mental health.
While laying bricks in the
extension we build on Carol’s mud-brick house in 1985 she tells me she suffers
depression. I’ve been living with her for a year, but I’m shocked to hear it,
both naïve and inquisitive enough to ask exactly what that means. I am 34 and
have no idea about depression.
It’s not really until studying
for a graduate diploma in adolescent health in 1997 that I first acquire a
formal knowledge about mental health and well-being. Even then, it’s sketchy,
has no practical application, and based in no real-life experience, albeit that
I teach a kid with OCD, girls with eating disorders, one who suffers panic
attacks.
In 2000 I’m one of a team of
four who devises a program, SKIPS, for primary school teachers and grade 5/6
students abound kids who live a parent with mental illness. I begin to expand
my knowledge of mental health and illness. I listen to the stories told by our
guest speakers, people with schizophrenia, bipolar, depression and anxiety.
Until 2006 I still think I’m
the sanest person on Earth. I now have a fine working knowledge of mental
health and well-being. One day I walk out of a school with my SKIPS
co-presenter Julie, having just elicited the elements of good mental health
from a bunch of grade 5/6 students, and realise my mental health is rat-shit.
I have some minor symptoms of
depression and anxiety; I’m stressed by my job, burnt out. I attend four
counselling sessions, listen hard, figure out a plan to regain my emotional
well-being, execute it, and recover very nicely, thank you. It takes a couple
of months.
In the six years since I’ve
come to believe that mental health, like physical health, is less robust as one
ages. Stressors are less welcome, less easily accommodated or overcome.
Physical deterioration, especially for someone used to physical prowess,
contributes to a less robust self-regard.
My mental health deteriorates
this year. Now, finally, with time away from work, a little space to consider
the bigger picture, I see the causal factors. I can see the things I need to
do, as I did after a bit of cerebration in 2006, to put things right.
It’s a big thing to admit that
you are not well, mentally. Time, rest and care will put things right.
Rock on.
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