Living with a person with mental illness

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By Andrew Low

Having a diagnosis of mental illness is difficult enough in itself, but there are other people to deal with, from whom the attitude is far from straightforward.

In my own case, there has been a vulnerability to guilt and the sound of coughing and traffic, and a struggle with the empty feelings inside, inner voices and unreciprocated letters. This has been going on since 1984 when I was at university. You can see “Enduring Schizophrenia” here on this website.

My partner’s anger

I’ve been with my partner since 1992 and I always thought she could be a bit brusque. But progressively over the years my partner’s anger has become worse. This is despite her successful job and a home and two healthy children. I do feel at heart she is unhappy because she was not able to start on a medical course to become a doctor when younger. Apparently she did not turn up for a maths exam, or she did not prepare for it properly. In that way she lost out on a place at Oxford to study medicine.

This has made for quite bitter feelings. She seems quite envious at times, and she becomes angry at the smallest trifle. Her line of work does not help. She has chosen to use her pharmacy qualification to work in clinical settings like hospitals or prescribing support for doctors, where she is exposed to successful medical professionals.

My partner’s anger comes out as swearing, really quite rude words in both English and in Gujerati, her ethnic language. It is volcanic really, so that it is constant over periods of two or three hours. As you can imagine, this can be distressing. But one has to just endure it, like trying to survive a bombardment.

We need help

The children cry and want to hit their mother. I’ve called the police as an emergency over 20 times. I’ve reported the matter to social services and the governing body of pharmacists. It seems that very little can be done, other than to report events as they happen. Recently a neighbour wrote something, saying she could hear the shouting as she passed our house; this is evidence supporting what I say.

It’s just the craziness of the situation that bites in hard. My partner can say things like “Hurry up,you lazy so-and-so” or “The sooner you admit your mental health problems and go on clozapine, the better”. Clozapine is for resistant symptoms in mental illness, and my partner has worked in the clinic where doctors monitor the side-effects of this drug.

It’s such a deep situation, and my her brother said that my partner’s anger may have caused the death of their mother at a premature age. From my point of view, I wish that medical treatment could be hurried forward towards my partner. The sooner the doctors realise there is a medical problem with my partner, the better.

It hurts

I do regard the need for honesty with regards to my symptoms as a pressing medical need. It’s a tragedy that there still remains just silence. Sahaja Yoga meditation, which I cling to for sanity and as a struggle against declining physical health in the face of my partner’s anger, could be much better known.

It’s a deeply stubborn,”by proxy”,”topsy-turvy”,”arsey versey” “reverse logic” sort of situation, described as “barking-itis” by one mental health nurse I met, and I just wish it would end.

It hurts, and I draw it to the attention of others in the hope that it will shed some light on a dark corner where some real nastiness is happening, and which may be common.