Last week’s column started by saying, “Community is important to human existence and essential for those struggling with mental disorders. The more connections one has the greater the feeling of being supported and possibility for recovery. That sense of belonging aids resilience.”
It defined a “visible or present community” as “empathetic and supportive,” and suggested that these characteristics remove some of the mistrust people managing mental illnesses hold.
In my decades of involvement in the lives of people in mental distress or living with mental disorders and their families, I have had the opportunity to see many sides of community support. These allow for greater insight into what works and expose some of the issues where support is lacking.
There are many examples of familial and relational support, where parents, siblings and spouses rise and rally. The incidence, in my experience, is higher than examples of “community support” in the workplace, the village or neighbourhood, and in churches and religious gatherings. (Even so, the stories of family persecution and mistreatment are still high and, too often, remain a heartbreaking reality).
In every instance, the variables in everyone’s encounter are different but the constants that promote lack of support remain stigma, prejudice, fear, unawareness, apathy, lack of human compassion and empathy, and the inability to uphold dignity and to recognise the human rights of people living with mental disorders.
Today, in raising the hope of those who live with mental disorders who crave supportive communities, I am highlighting an outstanding and praiseworthy instance.
A Moruga family, with whom I have close ties, has always had one sibling that our community referred to as “mad” for decades. Growing up, I would hear stories and when I began having my own issues in my mid-teens, those were quiet references that made me feel condemned in my own situation.
Later, as my advocacy grew, while doing outreach at the Moruga Health Centre, I had the opportunity to hear from her sisters about their concern and care for her as she aged. She lived independently but close to her family and when she had begun to have more demanding incidents which required greater care, the family rose to the occasion, providing her the protection and support she needed.
When they involved me briefly in giving advice about her care, I commended their compassion, while my heart bled from my own lack of support. When it became necessary, they secured a placement to give her the required care and safety.
Until her death, a few years ago, that entire family, including her nonagenarian mother, who has survived her, supported her with love, kindness, and proper management of her affairs. They remain one of the best examples of family as community support, I know. There are others like them that I hope to use to help families consider how to give support and care to those managing mental health crises and/or disorders.
But last week, as I was thinking through this instalment, I encountered the harrowing story of a family in Santa Rosa Heights. A 63-year-old woman, described as having a mental disorder, had been living alongside her 91-year-old mother’s decomposing body for weeks before an intervention.
The first outcry from people/commenters (who may never give a farthing of care if they were in a similar situation) was “How could the neighbours allow this to happen?”
This newspaper carried a story that spoke about the community’s efforts, giving insights into how neighbours were rebuffed when they offered to help.
One neighbour said it was difficult to initiate contact because of the continuous seclusion. She reportedly said, “It’s months upon months they wouldn’t come outside. She (the daughter) never used to bring out the mother, she never used to go out. Nothing.”
One neighbour said she had not seen the mom for over two years. She said the daughter was “only seen when she went outside to collect fast food”
So, I considered the lucidity of the daughter, who would have ordered, collected and paid for the food. My mind went into overdrive trying to factor in what I know about living with varying levels of function and dysfunction to the day-to-day scenario of these two women, both incapacitated in different ways and how they fended and fared on their own.
Considering community, I asked myself, were there other family members or relatives who knew about the living arrangements of these two?
Did the neighbours have any idea what could have been done beyond the rebuffs? What community mental health or social welfare services were missing that could have created a better scenario?
Who bears responsibility for this tragedy? I say again, in a country of high prejudice and low awareness, where community mental health is floundering, support from individuals, families, religious/spiritual groups, villages, people with common interests and the like are our best hope.
Sadly, this story is possibly a highlight of a scenario repeated ad infinitum here, but how do we prompt greater empathy and encourage more invested community support?