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Stories Submitted thoughts and stories Recovery Update
Recovery Update |
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activism | community/socialising/inclusion | depression | divorce | employment (+) | female | hospital | medication | menopause | money | peer support | psychosis | remarriage | sectioned | supportive spouse/partner | taking control
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Author: Chrys Muirhead Published: March 2005 Updated: 05 March 2008 Chrys Muirhead originally submitted her recovery thoughts via the 'Submit your story' on this website in 2005. Three years on and Chrys brings her recovery story up-to-date and also revisits the past to make sense of the present. It's nearly three years on from my original story on the SRN website which finished with me breaking a leg at a job interview in March 2005 – well, I got the job with the council and I became a casual library assistant, not the best situation for recovering from a broken leg as it involved a lot of standing and shifting books but it turned out to be a really enjoyable one, most of the time anyway. And I got to travel around the libraries in a very rural area of Fife, didn't get petrol money but I had access to the latest novels of my favourite writers and lovely sea views. It was good to meet lots of different people and there was responsibility in being the sole worker at the small branches. This all helped in my continuing mental health recovery. I was able to choose the 'permitted work' option and stay on Incapacity Benefit while earning around £80 a week, although single people and those on Income Support were not as fortunate only being allowed to get £20. The money was a positive thing but a more important thing was the restoring of my self-confidence and self-worth. I became much more like 'me' and I liked the person that I was. Towards the end of this post I was challenging the systems and suggesting improvements. I particularly wanted to be a relief mobile library driver which was also a lone worker post, driving the big van and issuing the books with a laptop. This was done by men and I was encouraged not to pursue this as there might be a problem for me accessing a toilet on route. I couldn't see there being a problem and by this time was getting a try at delivering books to the housebound in a transit van. However I was also applying for other jobs and started attending interviews, eventually getting a college post more suited to my previous qualifications and experience. I found that as the distance grew from my mental ill health episode so I became clearer as to what had happened. I've had three periods of mental ill health, the first two were puerperal psychosis after the births of my second and third sons over 25 years ago, followed by a depressive period as the medication brought me out of the psychosis. I was told it was because of hormone imbalance after childbirth and this makes sense. It's a pity I couldn't have been given hormones to restore the balance but that must be too simple? Both these episodes involved about a year on medication, Chlorpromazine and the side effects of muscle spasms, sunburn and general lethargy. I managed to avoid the ECT by running out of the hospital in my nightclothes – that was the time around 1978 when they lined people up for ECT, telling you that it was the best and quickest way to recover from depression, delusion, psychosis, neurosis etc. It also was the time when your clothes were locked away and you had to wear pyjamas even with mixed eating areas and I wore about three layers. It was a scary experience and you could be alongside drug addicts and alcoholics, and as a new mother my baby was back at home. I was fortunate to recover from these episodes and get back to normal, and actually found that I had a new lease of life. Something about having such a negative experience and recovering made me run at things, a 'seize the day' sort of behaviour. Some of the memorable highlights – being on the Krypton Factor, doing a preaching Church of Scotland course, starting up toddlers groups, play schemes, youth clubs in our local village, lambing small flock of sheep and selling at market ... not all at the same time but over the next few years. Fast forward to 2002 and I'm in a good job, full-time and managing groups of people when over the space of a week I go into a psychosis, hearing voices, seeing spaceships, not sleeping. By this time I was divorced with one grown up son still at home and eventually all my sons were with me and had no option but to take me to hospital where I was kept in for the three day section (this was because as soon as I got in I wanted back out) and given anti-psychotics. I wasn't in for much more than a week, just enough time to let the medication bring me out of the psychosis and monitor the effects of the drug, give muscle relaxants etc. I had begun the menopause and since then have learnt that if you have experienced post natal illness you are more than likely to have the same at the 'change' with the hormone imbalance. I don't know if I could have done anything, or taken anything, that would have avoided the psychosis and nearly two years of medication, diagnosis and treatment, plus the labels of bipolar illness then schizo-affective disorder then depression (only the latter diagnosis proved accurate and I think partly due to the medication). One good thing that happened in the midst of the bad time was that I remarried my husband, on our 30th anniversary, and that almost makes it all worthwhile. Another part of the story is that all my sons have experienced serious mental ill health with a psychosis, hospitalisation and treatment, and also both my sisters and my mother and father. But we have also experienced recovery in different ways. I know that there is research being undertaken to discover the bipolar gene (a relative is working on this at Cardiff University) and possibly other diagnosed mental illnesses. I'm not convinced that there is a gene but there might be a pre-disposition to having mental ill health if certain factors occur or at particular times of a person's life. The result might be a chemical imbalance in the brain or too little neurotransmitter activity, according to the scientific community, but it's anyone's guess how long this could last and if you're medicated or sedated how are you going to know that it's gone back to normal? It's now 2008 and for me it's a very happy new year! I continue in good mental health and have finally, and somewhat reluctantly, decided to use my recovery experience and professional know-how in a few local mental health initiatives. I had attended the SRN conference in December 2005 at Glasgow and was inspired by the speakers from Arizona and Georgia who promoted their peer support projects. They were positive yet humble and approachable, and I agreed with their philosophy that people could and did recover from serious mental ill health, and that the peer support model worked. The college job I took over 18 months ago involved working with student mentors, from delivering training to matching and support, and I applied for it because of my interest in peer support. The contract ended in December and in the last few weeks I've formed a steering group, we've had an AGM and launched Peer Support Fife with the aim of recruiting, training and supporting peer support workers to help people with mental ill health into recovery. At the same time I've started my own business, a more-than-profit enterprise, and I'm organising a conference to promote and celebrate recovery. I tend to see the future as being in a room with lots of doors, some are open a bit, some closed and it feels sometimes like I am pushing at a door and it will not open so I have to try another and another (friends have said that if this happens they go through the window). At this time it feels like the doors are all opening and I'm running through - hope I can keep up and take people with me! If you’d like to share your thoughts or experiences of recovery then contact us on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 0141 240 7790 to discuss. Click here to go back to previous page |
Story Tags
activism community/socialising/inclusion coping strategies creativity depression employment (+) exercise female hospital male medication medication (-) peer support (informal) and befriending seeing things differently self knowledge/learning/growth self management sense of self support from family support from friends support from mental health professionals supportive spouse/partner taking control talking therapies voluntary mental health services volunteering Story disclaimer
The stories presented here are for information only. They are meant to inspire hope and show that recovery can and does happen. The stories highlight various examples of recovery and we do not advocate any of these experiences as the ‘right’ way to recover. Recovery is an individual and unique process, each person must decide for himself or herself what will work for them. Please carefully consider any decisions you make about your own recovery and consult with someone you trust if you feel unsure. See our Submit Your Thoughts pages for details on how to submit a story to us or you can contact us.
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