Mental illness simply put is just like any other illness.  Like any other organ system the brain may get sick too. In general not all illnesses are curable, but a lot are manageable; mental illness is no exception. It has curable types of illnesses and manageable types too.
          Regardless of which category an illness falls into there is in essence, treatment. A lot of people with mental illness as with other illnesses recover fully without any trace of having been ill before and without affectation of their ability to return fully to their life before the illness. A proportion will be able to return to their normal life but will require medication to continue without a trace of the illness, while an even smaller proportion will not return fully and will require supervision and some form of medication. The underlying message here is that there is treatment.
           Treatment not just in the form of just medication, but social forms of support from family and society at large. Not only in monetary terms but in our perception of people with mental illness.
Being on medication for the management of an illness must not be looked upon with disdain, but should be commended. A lot of people find it difficult to complete a dose of antimalarial, be it a single day three tablet dose or the newer three day 24 tablet variety dose. People diagnosed with Diabetes, Hypertension or Sickle Cell Disease are on medication for their condition for life, some forms of mental illness are no different.
            In essence where there is life there is hope. Let’s try to focus more on the beauty that is the individual and less on what is required to keep that individual fully with us.

         Do we ever imagine how what we do can have lasting effects on the lives of others; like ‘ripples in a pond’? An apt analogy is that of casting a pebble into a pond to get a ripple effect spreading beyond the pebble.  For example a reading club is set up for disadvantaged children. John hears about this and attends; hears a story at the reading club on kindness and extends amuch needed act of kindness to a younger child at home; Yetunde hears the same story and decides to become a doctor someday thus making a decision to begin to take school more seriously. Ola hears the same story and decides to set up a reading club when he grows up to help children like himself and so on and so forth.
         It all started with one story read one day at the reading club and the act developed a life of its own branching off in so many directions. A Chinese proverb says “a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step”. A single act of kindness could be like that ripple in the pond .
What kind of pebble will you throw in the pond today?…… Just a thought.

It will come in time.

      People wonder a lot about individuals who survive ‘domestic abuse’ or ‘intimate partner violence’. It is an experience better lived than explained because sometimes even when you will not wish it on your worst enemy it is only those that have lived through it that can understand. For years I grappled with the possibility that one may have seen signs but ignored it until it became too late but no, sometimes the signs are not there at all. Only in retrospect are you able to tease out ‘seemingly infer-able’ signs and I use that phrase loosely as they may not have been anything less ordinary in their behavior than if they were exhibited by someone less violent. The chips did fall into place when I watched a session on TED titled ‘Why victims in domestic violence don’t leave’ by Leslie Morgan Steiner, the author of ‘Crazy Love’. It told a story that made so much sense. Scarily so that one wonders whether there is a kind of ‘boot camp’ that people who abuse their partners go to for mandatory training in ‘intimate partner violence’. That teaches universal ways of stripping their partners of the very things that make them human. Their ‘dignity and sense of self ’.

       Unfortunately in the African context the term more or less does not exist as it is so integrated into most cultures that at times unto the point of death you are advised by your fellow women to remain in you husbands home ‘because of your children’.  Little do people know that it is easier to stay with a spouse that abuses you than to leave, why? It takes more courage and sacrifice to walk out, most of the time walking out is the biggest sacrifice you can make for the children. Why? It breaks the cycle of violence, it teaches your children that in life there are consequences for bad behavior, that each human is to be respected as much as the next, and if they were ever to find themselves in that violent cycle there is hope that they can break the cycle too. That they have value and where they are not respected, they are strong enough to stand on their own. Most important of all it allows you retain your life and sanity in order to take care of your children for whom you have made this ultimate sacrifice.

       People that leave violent relationships should be looked upon with respect not disdain, cause if you stood for but a second in their shoes it may appear to you that you have stood at the edge of hell and a vast wasteland of nothingness spreads before you into eternity. is that really a life worth living?

Spread the word there is help.  

      In Mental illness you are NOT alone, you may think you are, you are NEVER alone. Misery loves company, one learns that in illness. When you’ve come in contact with illness you accommodate others that have too. That brings comfort because when you embrace it together, u find what works, and what works maybe part of the SOLUTION.  

           Mental illness affects a large proportion of the world’s population, it wouldn’t be farfetched to say that everyone at one point in their life or the other has been affected by mental illness. Statistics have it that the prevalence of schizophrenia is one percent, when this figure is quoted it seems so insignificant and far removed from one’ self, that it is unthinkable that this “most dreaded” of mental illnesses could ever affect any one you know. The figures are true but the translation of this is usually wrong.
   The rationale is simple, anyone that has a brain is exposed to the possibility of having something affecting it at one time or the other. This could range from being as mild and seemingly normal as anxiety, grief from loss or bereavement to depression or psychosis. The spectrum is large and we all fall somewhere along this spectrum at one point or the other during our lifetime. If we claim not to, then someone we know or are even close to someone who has at one time or the other fallen within this spectrum.
         Mental illness can interfere with our potentials but with support it doesn’t truncate it. Knowing someone with mental illness and showing compassion allows us to exercise our ability to show that we are human and allows the illness to have a human face. A lot of people with mental illness suffer needlessly when they could have gotten help due to the fear of stigmatization.
Mental illness is all around us and it affects those we hold dearest. It does not always have to stop us from becoming the people we were destined to be. It should be seen just as an ‘illness people live’ with but not what defines them. In summary love them and accept them, they are people too.