A PSYCHIATRIC JOURNEY IN ESSAY FORM 2
peter.casey@tadaust.org.au| LONELINESS: A SYMPTOM OF MENTAL ILLNESS.
There are unfortunate people who are truly alone and who don’t possess, for whatever reason, the necessary physical or mental wherewithal to improve their lonely lot. In a practical sense mental illness and loneliness are two halves of an entirety. They share unwanted symptoms that are an integral part to both conditions. But the single most devastating symptom shared between someone with a mental health issue and someone in a state of an incipient loneliness is a calculated and deliberate exclusion of these people from mainstream society. It’s not at all that clear which problem comes first. Is it loneliness that develops into the symptoms of a mental illness or does it occur conversely? Is it the psychiatric disability and all it’s incumbent symptoms or is it the crushing loneliness and all it’s naturally occurring negatives? And all the while a mental health issue has a particularly nasty habit of alienating afflicted people from mainstream society and so making loneliness a legitimate symptom of a psychiatric disability. Loneliness is a very close relative of a mental health issue and certain proof that an artificially imposed alienation is alive and well and that loneliness, as a separate issue, is a natural consequence of these surprisingly common circumstances. This unhappy state of affairs can only lead to a more profound sense of alienation more debilitating than a rampaging paranoia. Or the mind numbing auditory hallucinations and perhaps a pervasive agoraphobia all of which, according to current wisdom require at least a minimal degree of personal interaction to overcome. Personally I’m not convinced that people need people to live a full and happy life but the professional mental health service providers seem to think that the opposite is the case. But loneliness itself is a free standing and separate symptom of a deeper seated psychiatric condition. I’m not talking here about people like myself who are quietly content keeping their own company and who neither seek out companionship nor feel compelled to interact with others. If everyone had an attitude like mine then this essay would be totally unnecessary. But I’m familiar with the symptom of loneliness through a long and close association with those who suffer from it. For many of us with psychiatric disabilities our friends and family have long ago been estranged or otherwise alienated and this situation was then, and is now, due directly to a variety of mental health issues that assail our delicate sensibilities. But there’s been too much water passed under the bridge for any hope now of a reconciliation with former friends and families. You simply can’t return to the way things were or to return to what might have been given different circumstances. Loneliness truly is a symptom of a psychiatric disability and there’s little to be done to lessen it’s impact. As a group within a group within the community, lonely mental health service consumers are truly on their own. We are all a party to an unstable existence inhabited by an indivisible singularity with little hope of better days to come. Which is the real crux of the problem of psychiatric disabilities and loneliness. When you are truly alone, with nothing positive appearing on a too distant and doubly vague horizon, is the optimum time to actively seek out the company of others. It’s at this point that such relationships are most required and mental health service consumers are at their most vulnerable. For some, the need to interact with others, even allowing that supposedly vital interaction might be with people in a similarly fragile mental state is best met by a visit to a drop in centre put in place specifically for people with mental health issues. This lonely group of people who attend these drop-in centres might not actually be mates in the Australian connotations of the word but they are mostly happily acquainted individuals who drift in and out of each others lives unquestioning and unquestioned and who oftentimes come and go to the irregular dictates of a cycle of varying degrees of mental wellness. It’s when these drop-in centres are closed that those of us without live-in company are most alone. For some mental health service consumers these centres are not only an important extension of a life line that they rely heavily on but they are most often the only opportunity to interact with others. Mental health service consumers somehow maintain a mental bridge between a desperately solitary lifestyle and a partly dormant aloneness that activates itself only when all the professional care providers have knocked off and gone home to whatever it is that they do in the afternoon, evenings and weekends. But what is it that many people with a psychiatric disability go home to? What’s their lifestyle like outside the limited hours kept by the drop in centres? An empty flat inhabited only by the ghosts of past tenants. This takes on a greater importance than an uninviting silence. Perhaps they have a radio or a television. Which must provide a scarce relief for anyone seeking any sort of usable intellectual stimulation. What they do have is an artificial electronic companionship by proxy. It would be a remarkable improvisation for all concerned if our mental health issues would just cooperate for a while and confine their torment to the hours of nine to five Monday to Friday. Including public holidays. If only we could shut down our mental faculties to suit the social calendar. So what’s to be done to alleviate the lonely existence for someone without close friends or family? I know people who would make a determined effort to hibernate if it were possible until these painfully lonely times have passed. |
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