Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo

It would take years of work to ed­u­cate peo­ple suf­fi­cient­ly on the work­ings of the mind and body in or­der to have wide­spread un­der­stand­ing that men­tal ill­ness, like any oth­er in­fir­mi­ty, can hap­pen to any­one.

In­fir­mi­ties of the mind have had a bad rap from the be­gin­ning of time. Their his­to­ry is a colour­ful one, start­ing with a very com­pas­sion­ate com­mu­ni­ty at­ti­tude, mov­ing far-left to be­ing an aber­ra­tion that al­lows stig­ma to cling to the is­sue like an ex­tra lay­er of skin.

And now, com­ing full cir­cle, pro­fes­sion­als world­wide are teach­ing us, again, to ac­cept the po­si­tion that com­mu­ni­ty is im­por­tant to heal­ing and bal­ance.

The is­sue may be, how­ev­er, that we have gone so far to the oth­er side in our dis­crim­i­na­tion, ig­no­rance and fear that those who ad­vo­cate for a bet­ter place in so­ci­ety for the men­tal­ly ill may, in fact, spend all their lives ed­u­cat­ing and not ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the dif­fer­ence.

For me, to­day marks a year since the Guardian be­gan pub­lish­ing this fea­ture on the in­vi­ta­tion of its then new­ly-ap­point­ed ed­i­tor in chief Judy Ray­mond, who of­fered me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­nounce on men­tal well-be­ing.

And what a year it's been!

Last week, I re­viewed al­most all of the 52 con­tri­bu­tions, with mixed emo­tions run­ning the gamut from melan­choly to mirth.

There's some­thing to be said about how much of my­self I've placed in the pub­lic do­main on this par­tic­u­lar is­sue. But hav­ing al­ways been an open per­son, con­fi­dent about my place in this world, helps.

Con­stant­ly, peo­ple would say to me that noth­ing could be so ter­ri­bly wrong with me be­cause every week I write for the news­pa­pers.

Lit­tle do they know, that even that sim­ple task could be an ex­as­per­at­ing ex­er­cise which drains me of phys­i­cal strength for days on end when I have to push past the lethar­gy and en­nui–dreads of liv­ing with de­pres­sion–to meet my com­mit­ment.

To­day is one of those days. I've just ex­pe­ri­enced a week of "noth­ing­ness," feel­ing some deep hurts and sink­ing de­pres­sive­ness that have made me re­coil a bit. If you looked at me you wouldn't know, be­cause I re­al­ly try to be­have bet­ter than I'm feel­ing for my ben­e­fit and the com­fort of those around me.

If I can­not rouse my­self to that, I re­treat for my mend­ing.

The sav­ing grace of my life is gar­den­ing. When I get to that low place I throw my­self in­to my feel-good ac­tiv­i­ties of till­ing the soil and watch­ing things grow.

Long ago you could mea­sure the tenor of my dis­tress by the changes in my hair­style–so said Mil­ton as he watched me through cri­sis af­ter cri­sis as a teenag­er and then ob­served from a dis­tance my hell­ish years, which in­clud­ed rais­ing our son.

To­day, you'd have to gauge my state of mind by the gar­den. I plant every week as though I have an or­der to com­plete. I pur­chase gar­den­ing sup­plies with every dol­lar be­yond my ex­pens­es. And, while I'm grate­ful for every sale, every­one knows that it nev­er mat­ters whether any­one comes to buy–I con­tin­ue to prop­a­gate.

De­spite my chal­lenges, I'm des­per­ate to get oth­ers to un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate the is­sues of men­tal well-be­ing, which we all face, but I've ac­cept­ed that it is a long-term cam­paign of faith­ful­ly teach­ing, and re­peat­ing, most times to a scep­ti­cal, ter­ri­fied, or un­re­spon­sive au­di­ence.

Stig­ma and mis­un­der­stand­ing are rife. Their his­to­ry is so deeply en­trenched that to counter it would take an equal amount of re­sources to those in­ject­ed in­to their nur­tur­ing.

Re­al­is­ing that from the be­gin­ning of times there were al­ways peo­ple liv­ing with men­tal ill­ness, I be­gan re­search­ing the lit­er­a­ture as part of my process to­wards the out­reach.

Ex­plor­ing the an­nals of the Caribbean, I found that the Arawaks were cred­it­ed with "open, hu­mane com­mu­ni­ty sys­tems, us­ing unguents and salves and rudi­men­ta­ry treat­ments with­out re­straints" for treat­ment of the men­tal­ly ill.

African slav­ery brought both tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge of heal­ing and re­li­gious rit­u­als, which were used to lessen such oc­cur­rences and treat the af­flict­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty. But the colonis­ers legal­ly dis­band­ed these.

The Eu­ro­pean colonis­ers then in­tro­duced lu­natic asy­lums and were the ones re­spon­si­ble for in­sti­tu­tion­al­is­ing ar­rests and in­car­cer­a­tion as "ther­a­peu­tic" prin­ci­ples.

Prof Fred­er­ick Hick­ling writes: "Dur­ing the Span­ish colo­nial pe­ri­od (1500-1650) the men­tal health sys­tem of the in­dige­nous In­di­ans were prompt­ly re­placed by the pre­vail­ing psy­chi­atric prac­tices of Eu­rope.

"In Ja­maica es­pe­cial­ly, des­ig­nat­ed build­ings ad­ja­cent to the monastery in the main town of San­ti­a­go de la Ve­ga were used for the men­tal­ly ill. Clear­ly this was the be­gin­ning of cus­to­di­al in­sti­tu­tion­al­i­sa­tion in the West In­dies."

Deep­en­ing the con­vic­tions of a pop­u­la­tion break­ing bad on men­tal well­be­ing, not un­like so many oth­er relics of coloni­sa­tion where psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­re­pair per­vade, is a life­time en­deav­our. The per­ils of wider os­tracis­ing for ad­vo­cates, as has been my ex­pe­ri­ence in the past year, loom.

I'm some­times down­heart­ed, yet I'm all in (and most­ly alone, too). I must press on.

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