"What message is the government sending to those who are in dire need of help?"
After
confirmation that there would be cuts in the mental health budget and the subsequent protests
outside Dáil Éireann, this post by an Irish student concerning her mother's mental health issues is extremely relevant.
Fé Langley took to Facebook to share the heartbreaking story of spending her childhood in foster care, without any explanation from social services, because her mother's mental illness was so severe that she was unable to raise her daughter.
The 19-year-old speaks about eventually losing her beloved mother to cancer, while stressing the comparison between the physical and mental illnesses that she sustained.
"It was sad to think that this (terminal cancer) wasn’t the hardest battle she had to face in her years, but rather her mental health issues."
Lamenting the absence of any significant intervention by the government in Irish mental health, this makes for a very passionate, at times difficult, but extremely important read.
She writes...
I have been fostered since the age of 3/4 , moving from home to home and then finally being told when I was 6 that I’d be “staying in this home for a few days” where a few days turned into a few weeks, a few weeks into months, months into years and now I’ve been in foster care til the day I was 18 years old. What I was never told was why. Why was I exactly in care? Why wasn’t I living with my nuclear mother? Why couldn’t my mother bring me to school?
Why wasn’t there any food in the house and a constant pang of hunger in my stomach? Why was my mom constantly in bed asleep when she had enough sleep I, as a naive 4 year old, thought? Why did she seem sad ALL the time? Why why why? I can honestly say to this day that I was never ever told by the social services why for all of these things.
I was merely told ‘she’s not well’. Not well? I guarantee that if someone’s mother or father were suffering from cancer or a terminal illness that it would have been explained to them in great detail that they are suffering from a wretched illness, so why is it that for mental illness the same isn’t being done? We address mental and physical illness’ on different levels when realistically, they both damage, hurt, destroy people’s lives equally, if not, even more.
I, as a vulnerable young girl, had to deal with likes of bipolar, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts that my mother had, yet I didn’t know exactly what they were.
It could have taken my mother 10 minutes to turn a light switch on because she needed to swallow a certain way before she could turn it on, she would spend days in bed without eating, she would spend hours in the pub with me by her side, she admitted to me when I was 10-years-old that she had used addictive substances such as heroin, cocaine etc to ease the pain, she constantly tried to talk herself out of taking her medication for her mental illness.
I had to persuade her on the phone to take it because it would make her feel better although I really had no clue did it or not.
I had to cut contact with her as a coping mechanism for myself because I never understood how to deal with her mental illness, not because I didn’t love her and although she passed away in January, till the day she died, she thought I didn’t love her and blamed herself for the way my life was, for going into care and thought I thought she was a bad mother. I didn’t and never have thought so.
As a 19-year-old today I can say that it certainly wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault she suffered from such awful mental illness, it wasn’t her fault that we were homeless for a time, it wasn’t her fault that she was let down.
It was the government’s fault.
It was the social services' fault. It was every ignorant person who had such a stigmatized outlook on mental illness fault. My mother, at her lowest points, was the woman on the street you’d consider to be ‘a bit strange’ or would have avoided because she was downing a litre of rum in pure daylight.
As a matter of fact, she was suffering from an illness that is so disregarded by the government that are so called meant to ‘represent us’. Well I’m sorry but where are the people in the Dáil representing those who are suffering or the family members, friends, schools, work colleagues who deal with those with mental illness’ on a daily basis?
Mental health was always unspoken of in my childhood even though I was faced with it daily. I was made feel like it was dirty, ashamed of it or it was something that was the person's fault for the way their life was.
I’m pretty sure that all those who suffer from drug or alcohol abuse, homelessness or constant isolation from society which is a result of mental health problems would certainly NOT choose that life.
How can we tell people ‘There’s always a solution and someone to talk to’ when the government clearly validate this as being completely untrue. If there isn’t investment for more services and education, the reality is, there are not enough professionals there for people to talk to, so why do we keep saying that there are?
People are being turned away daily for hospitalization for anorexia, self harm, anxiety, depression, the list is endless, free counselling isn’t readily available for everyone, to see a professional could cost you €50, just for you to express yourself for how you feel, €50? That is astounding.
My mother was a good person who was unfortunately riddled with such terrible illness’. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year and soon to find out it was terminal, it was sad to think that this wasn’t the hardest battle she had to face in her years but rather her mental health issues. Now if that doesn’t hit home that a mental illness had a much more profound effect than a physical illness, then I really don’t know what will.
I have grown to be the person I am today because of my experiences and have defied all odds that are usually attached to being fostered and all that business. I am proud of the person I have become but I can’t say I’m proud of the utter lack of education of mental illness in our schools and the lack of funding from the government.
I can’t say that people will be taken seriously about their mental health issues because the government don’t even take it seriously.
Mental health issues aren't just stats and figures, they are real people who are fighting a long and hard battle and with a government who evidently don't take this matter seriously.
What message is a government sending to those who are in dire need of help?
I am a 19-year-old college student who has a life full of hobbies, studies, traveling and family and friends and exams next week.
However I can constructively give a concise view on mental health and I haven’t even reached 20 years yet and the government gets paid to do so, yet they DON’T address this matter! Isn’t it scary that the young people of today are telling a “legitimate” government what is concerning us, yet they decide to ignore our cries. Where’s the logic in that?
Remember, if you are feeling low - you are not alone. There are many people and organisations out there who will do their utmost to get you the help you need.
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