JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 18, 2025

MEN­TAL HEALTH MAT­TERS

My story of rising out of the ashes

by

20160209

Last week some read­ers were com­ment­ing about var­i­ous ideas of re­cov­ery af­ter a men­tal health cri­sis. Prompt­ed by the sub­ject of the past few weeks–child­hood trau­mas and ad­ver­si­ty–the ques­tion kept re­cur­ring about our cur­rent in­abil­i­ty to read­i­ly ac­cess care for our­selves or for those in our fam­i­ly who live with or are pre­sent­ing with men­tal ill­ness­es/dis­or­ders.

The anx­i­ety was ev­i­dent among some of them when it be­came pub­lic knowl­edge too, that psy­chi­atric pa­tients were with­out their much-need­ed med­ica­tion for over a month.

"Hun­dreds of psy­chi­atric pa­tients are at risk and can al­so pose dan­ger to them­selves and rel­a­tives as their med­ica­tion has been un­avail­able at the health cen­tres and hos­pi­tal for the past month," the re­port said.

Our col­lec­tive, wide­spread dis­ap­point­ment was when a news­pa­per thought that "mad­ness" was an ap­pro­pri­ate head­line for a sto­ry dis­cussing the dis­ad­van­taged men­tal health pa­tient who were at the mer­cy of in­ef­fi­cien­cy and care­less­ness of the state. What a cheap shot! Mock­ing pa­tients' gen­uine dilem­ma and ill­ness­es (which in­cludes mad­ness) so that a news sto­ry can have bite!

It be­ing Car­ni­val week in T&T, af­ter last Wednes­day when the sto­ry broke, our na­tion­al–and ra­tio­nal–at­ten­tion shift­ed fo­cus to the mat­ters at hand.

Since I'm on the touchy sub­ject of child­hood ad­ver­si­ty and trau­ma and the preva­lence of child­hood sex­u­al vi­o­la­tions in adult di­ag­no­sis, which points to a high in­ci­dence of child­hood abuse, I feel com­pel to in­ter­ject and say re­cov­ery is pos­si­ble. That's my Ash Wednes­day mes­sage.

First­ly, a large per­cent­age of peo­ple who have been vi­o­lat­ed have sur­vived with­out too much vis­i­ble or no­tice­able ef­fects. This is at­trib­uted to the re­silience of chil­dren/peo­ple to with­stand ad­ver­si­ty.

The Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal As­so­ci­a­tion (APA) writes, "The ma­jor­i­ty of chil­dren and ado­les­cents man­i­fest re­silience in the af­ter­math of trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ences. This is es­pe­cial­ly true of sin­gle-in­ci­dent ex­po­sure..."

The APA says, "A sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of chil­dren in Amer­i­can so­ci­ety are ex­posed to trau­mat­ic life events." In fact, "more than two thirds of chil­dren re­port ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a trau­mat­ic event by age 16."

It de­scribes a trau­mat­ic event as "one that threat­ens in­jury, death, or the phys­i­cal in­tegri­ty of self or oth­ers and al­so caus­es hor­ror, ter­ror, or help­less­ness at the time it oc­curs."

Trau­mat­ic events, says the APA, in­clude sex­u­al abuse, phys­i­cal abuse, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, com­mu­ni­ty and school vi­o­lence, med­ical trau­ma, mo­tor ve­hi­cle ac­ci­dents, acts of ter­ror­ism, war ex­pe­ri­ences, nat­ur­al and hu­man-made dis­as­ters, sui­cides, and oth­er trau­mat­ic loss­es.

Against all that though, re­cov­ery is pos­si­ble. But it's im­por­tant al­so, to de­fine re­cov­ery since it means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple.

In 2004, NIMHE's state­ment on re­cov­ery de­fined it to in­clude the fol­low­ing mean­ings:

1. A re­turn to a state of well­ness (eg fol­low­ing an episode of de­pres­sion);

2. Achieve­ment of a qual­i­ty of life ac­cept­able to the per­son (fol­low­ing an episode of psy­chosis);

3. A process or pe­ri­od of re­cov­er­ing (fol­low­ing trau­ma);

4. A process of gain­ing or restor­ing some­thing (one's so­bri­ety);

5. An act of ob­tain­ing us­able re­sources from ap­par­ent­ly un­us­able sources (in pro­longed psy­chosis);

6. Re­cov­er­ing an op­ti­mum qual­i­ty and sat­is­fac­tion with life in dis­con­nect­ed cir­cum­stances (as with de­men­tia).

My life is an in­ter­est­ing jour­ney from ear­ly psy­chosis, bursts of well­ness, episodes of ig­nor­ing the is­sues, pe­ri­ods of trust­ing God and for­sak­ing med­ica­tion, deny­ing the re­al­ness of men­tal health com­pli­ca­tions, and full cir­cle in­to suc­cess­ful­ly man­ag­ing pro­longed di­ag­no­sis.

My sto­ry is one of re­cov­ery.

It's one of ris­ing out of the ash­es, such cin­ders be­ing residues of my own un­do­ing, while tak­ing peo­ple down and along my dread­ful, emo­tion­al abyss be­fore re­al­is­ing that the hell I'm ex­pe­ri­enc­ing is per­son­al and not nec­es­sar­i­ly at­trib­uted to the con­duct of oth­ers, over which I have no con­trol.

The lat­ter does not ex­on­er­ate the hurts and in­jus­tices I've ex­pe­ri­enced at the hands of oth­ers. Those are re­al and would re­main my re­al­i­ty. But I took charge of my health and re­cov­ery, own­ing my mis­takes and ac­cept­ing that I am a "piece of work" that need se­ri­ous work!

La­yard and Hag­ell (2015) say re­cov­ery be­gins "first is the fam­i­ly � the sta­bil­i­ty it of­fers, the stim­u­lus it pro­vides and the val­ues it nur­tures. Then there is the psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port of the wider com­mu­ni­ty, in­clud­ing the health­care sys­tem, but al­so a whole range of lo­cal so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions. And fi­nal­ly there is the school, which leaves its mark on the char­ac­ter of every child."

Oth­ers have giv­en ev­i­dence that faith and re­li­gion have sig­nif­i­cant bear­ings on re­cov­ery, al­so. Whichev­er sup­port is avail­able to you, know this: re­cov­ery is a re­al­i­ty.

Long be­fore re­cov­ery though, as a na­tion, we must com­mit to pro­tect­ing our chil­dren and lim­it­ing the in­ci­dence of pathol­o­gy in adult­hood. We need to in­vest in ac­tion through­out the life course, pro­vid­ing the best op­por­tu­ni­ties for re­duc­ing risks to which our pop­u­la­tion is cur­rent­ly ex­posed. That could even be the type of fo­cus that en­sures we nev­er "run out of med­ica­tion."

�2 Car­o­line C Rav­el­lo is a strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions and me­dia prac­ti­tion­er with over 30 years of pro­fi­cien­cy. She holds an MA in Mass Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and is pur­su­ing the MSc in Pub­lic Health (MPH) from the UWI. She has been liv­ing/thriv­ing with men­tal health is­sues for over 35 years. Write to: mind­ful.tt@gmail.com


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored