D-WORDSLAYER

A culture of misinformation I did not know what mental illness really was until I was close to twenty. Before, I thought mental illness was something which resulted from a deficiency at birth and was genetic. This thought scared me as I grew up knowing my mother, grand mother and great grandmother were ‘mad’, as we were told from a tender age. My mother was the first of five children and my grandmother was one of more than five, and my great grandmother was also from a large family. No one told us about mental illness or what caused it or why it happened. I simply thought it was an unfortunate curse on at least one member of the family, and prayed to never 'get it'!  Some of the 'folklore facts' I grew up with were;   If you kept your problems to yourself you would ‘overload’ and go crazy. If you fell too much in love you would go crazy. If you had too many bills you would go crazy. If you had no friends you would go crazy. If you were too ‘bright’ in s...

A Frantic Call "Please help me. She just stood at the door with a knife in hand. I can't live with her anymore." Panic and fear sounded through the phone. Its 2:30 am. (After a lot of drama, she returned to house, as though that call was never made)! There was a lot of uncertainty when that call was received. Did it really happen, or was my mother  creating a situation because she did not get what she wanted from my elder sister? Was it a hallucination - it happens a lot more with her aging. Trying to figure out truth from fiction with mentally ill people can be hard.  In this case, it was a variation of the truth. My sister claims she thought someone was outside, and armed herself, while questioning mom about a scholarship she never received. As for my mother, she ran out of the house into the darkness afraid for her life, as my sister followed - afraid for her. Does this make sense? No it does not, but it happened just over a year ago.  According to Google, ...

You are invited to look closer My friends I'm sharing a series of blogs called "Open Book - Mental Illness" from tomorrow. It's a heavy topic but is a serious social issue in the Caribbean and the world.  There are many families with loved ones who have some form of mental illness. My friend  Lisa Fraser Gallagher  has shared on her personal experiences with mental illness and she is an excellent resource on this topic.  In my fam ily one of my sisters and my mother are mentally ill. Like any other disease if you are unaware of the symptoms, left untreated it gets worse. There is no cure for mental illness. It can be managed, however not many people are willing to accept their loved ones are mentally ill. In Trinidad & Tobago there is societal acceptance of mentally ill behavior once no one is physically hurt. Hence, we have many street dwellers and vagrants living a homeless life by choice because of their mental illness.  To offer help to ...