Tuesday, Octobr 10, 2017
ARANA Pearson says recovery from mental health is possible.
Photo Louis Klaassen D6053-10
The outcomes for people who experience mental illness is much brighter these days
Kathy Forsyth
NOT so long ago, if you had a serious mental illness, the prognosis was that you were doomed to a lifelong struggle against it.
You were led to believe that you could not live a “normal” life. That employment and even having a family might not be possible.
But with new research and the development of ways within a community to support people who experience mental illness, it is now known that people can make a full recovery, and that they can have careers, a family and more.
Arana Pearson was diagnosed with serious mental illness in the mid-1980s, and is an example to everyone that recovery is possible.
Mr Pearson has been part of an advisory committee drawing up a blueprint for future mental health care policy. He is now an Opotiki-based peer support worker and advocate for the Whakatohea Iwi Social and Health Services, which falls under the Ministry of Health.
He has been working in mental health for 20 years. He also has a family, and is the proud father of a daughter, a teacher in Australia.
Today is Mental Health Awareness Day, and Mr Pearson said that for people with a mental health illness, every day was mental health awareness day. More than 160,000 people accessed mental health care in New Zealand this year.
“When I was diagnosed in the mid-1980s there was no hope for a recovery. Doctors told you then that you should plan for a diminished life. That was the message,” he said.
“In those days we all went off to a hospital in the countryside for a two-year stay on average.”
Mr Pearson said in terms of the Mental Health Act, a person diagnosed with mental illness before 1992 would come up for review only after two years.
“Back then, if you wanted to get on with life you often couldn’t and the community learned that if you got a major mental illness then off you would go to be treated for two years.
“This was not a good outcome. The longer you are contained in hospital the more diminished your life becomes.”
Archaic ways of dealing with mental health are changing, with de-institutionalisation key to this shift in thinking.
“This was before longitudinal studies were done. Many of us with diagnoses have now disproved that we cannot recover. We have found ourselves in employment, raising families and contributing to the community.”
Mr Pearson said community care was key to recovery.
But, he said, “how can we support community care if the community does not know how to care?
“We have learned with serious mental illness to hand people over to professionals, so we have lost a lot of skills in the community. But we are now rebuilding those skills.
“When I started working in mental health (in the mid-1990s) there were no support workers. Now we have 20,000 support workers.”
The good thing, he said, was that many support workers had themselves lived through mental illness, and brought personal experience to the job.
A large part of his work is fighting discrimination against people with mental illness. “Stigma and discrimination are major barriers for recovery. The community has some vague ideas that perhaps we are dangerous. But we are not.
“This is a major hangover from the 20th century, and we are changing those beliefs. Research shows that someone with major mental illness is more likely to be abused in a community, to lose employment to lose their home and to be picked on.
“I have had clients who have been stood over at cash machines to have their money stolen.”
Mr Pearson said mental health was not a major risk; even people with schizophrenia or who are bi-polar “are more vulnerable than a risk”.
The only concern, he said, was risk being heightened when someone with mental illness abused drugs or alcohol.
Mr Pearson believes we can break the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness by sharing the true life recovery stories of people.
“And by helping people to a full recovery for as long as it takes (and it can take a while – sometimes a few years …) but people do come right in time.
“I have always said that for every nut there is a spanner,” he laughed. “You have just got to have a toolbox with the right spanners.”
Another major barrier to recovery for people in the Eastern Bay is the lack of “crisis respite provision”.
Crisis respite is the short-term 24/7 care in the community for people to recover from a debilitating episode of mental illness. They don’t have to go to hospital, they just need a crisis respite to recover from their symptoms.
Mr Pearson said funding was provided for this in the Western Bay of Plenty, but inexplicably not in the Eastern Bay.
“Part of my work is to advocate to change that. I have seen some really outdated practices where we are waiting for people to get really crook before there is a response.”
Mr Pearson said he was part of a working group to address this in the Eastern Bay of Plenty.
“We want the community to know that we are working to improve what is already here. There are some gaps but we are working to plug these.”
Depression symptoms can include:
- Lack of energy and extremely unmotivated
- Restless, moody and easily annoyed
- Thinking the worst of everything
- Feelings of hopelessness, shame and sadness
- Not wanting to be around other people
- Difficulty sleeping
Helplines:
- Depression Helpline – 0800111757
- Lifeline – 0800 543354
- Youthline – 0800 376633 or
- text 234
- Samaritans 0800 726666