Bi-Polar Experience: Instalment #2 (depressed, diet, quit, psychiatric)

[RonPrice]

For those following on from the first instalment at this site, I provide the following--with more at a later date:
_______________________
1.6 After more than 60 years of dealing with this medical problem in my private and public life, I would be only too happy to put it to bed, to put it into some final corner and forget it. Sadly, or perhaps fortuitously, I can not do so because I still suffer, even after 60 years, with problems that are part of this disorder’s long history in my life. I have also become more conscious, as I have come out in the last few years, of how this statement has come to be of great help to many, especially at the 75 mental health sites on the Internet where I place all or parts of this document.

1.7 I have italicized some of the more important sections toward the end of this document to assist those who are busy and not inclined to read a long statement like this. This italicization will assist such readers in: (a) making whatever assessment they need to make of this account, (b) finding out whatever information they desire that is relevant to their particular situation and (c) deciding what my present psycho-emotional state is in order to understand why I do not want to: (1) be employed/work in some job, (2) serve in some volunteer organization or (3) take on some task, some apparently simple activity, that I have been asked to take on.

2. My Experience of Manic-Depression:
Phase One--The First 37 Years 1943 To 1980

2.1 In the first 37 years of my life I had many episodes of various kinds of emotional imbalance or disorientation, themselves of varying lengths and intensities, ranging from a euphoric, impetuous, expansive or high mood to a depressed, gray, low energy or despondent mood. Indeed the range of mood in these 37 years was much more extreme than that indication in this last sentence, but the complete/extreme range was rarely experienced. Sometimes these symptoms affected my day-to-day life severely and negatively and sometimes the affect was non-existent, insignificant, hardly noticeable. After many experiences on the fringe of a normality that was my usual modus operandi or modus vivendi, as it is said in Latin , on the fringe of what I saw as my general everyday experience of life, an experience that is sometimes called the quotidian by writers, poets and novelists, I was diagnosed as a MD in May 1980.

2.2 At the time I was in the process of treatment by a psychiatrist in Launceston Tasmania. I had often been on the fringe of this disorder, as I say above, a borderline zone, a limen as some historians call it, a border territory, a zone between normality and various behavioural extremes and eccentricities from my birth in 1944 to 1980. But in 1980 the symptoms were extreme and required hospitalization. The treatment regime in 1980 was lithium carbonate, an antimanic medication. Lithium was the first really successful mood stabilizer used by doctors to treat MD, for an illness that in the 1990s began to be called BPD.

2.3 My history to that point had been far from smooth and linear as my remarks above indicate. Those thirty-six years had often been bisected, polarised and traumatised. As I indicated above I have written a more detailed account of these years but this outline, this brief sketch here, of particular episodes and the periods between episodes will suffice. My experience of these highly diverse emotional and psychological swings of mood in everyday experience away form the norm, from my norm, is only part of my story. But it is a crucial part. Everyone has their story for everyone experiences all sorts of abnormal eccentricities and health problems in life, some people of course more than others and some more traumatic and intense than others.

My account of those years from 1943 to 1980 follows. I try, in writing about and in summarizing these first 37 years of my life, not to overstate my case, nor to understate it, but give an account of those first 37 years which I refer to here in this general statement as phase one of my bi-polar life.

2.4 In some ways the inclusion of the names of those doctors who treated me over the years in this first phase and in later phases would personalise this account, but names are not that important and to include them here in this narrative causes confidentiality problems and raises privacy issues for some readers and for people in my own past who might not want to be mentioned. This question of confidentiality and privacy is especially true at some internet sites where posts are rejected if names are included in any posting at the site concerned---and so I leave names out. Those whose names I could mention would not be troubled by their inclusion here, not now, not in 2007 after an extensive destigmatization of the disorder in recent years and after so much of my experience and so many of the people concerned are now, what you might call, ancient history.

2.4.1 I certainly appreciate the medical and clinical work of: (a) several of the doctors I went to in my childhood, adolescence and adulthood, (b) the psychiatrists who have treated me since June of 1968, nearly four decades ago and (c) many family members, friends, colleagues and associations, some known well and others hardly at all, who have helped me ride the waves when the disorder raised its head yet again along the way, the road of life.

2.5 Comments on My Ante-Natal, Neo-Natal,
Childhood and Adolescence Life: 1943-1963

2.5.1 As I refer to above, I had some experience of what may well have been BPD in childhood as far back as infancy and at the toddler stage, all of the pre-school years, 0-5, of early childhood development. My mother nearly died in the first month after my birth, the implications of which it is not my intention to go into here, indeed, if there are any significant implications at all in the ante-natal and neo-natal phases of my life I do not examine here. I am inclined to think, though, they may be important in the aetiology of this illness. Before the age of five there is evidence that my behaviour had some of the features of what is now called Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Perhaps in a later edition of this essay I will attempt a more detailed outline of what I recall from these years of early childhood, but my recollections are minimal and it is not my intention to comment further on these early years.

Through middle and late childhood into the puberty cusp of 12/13 in 1956/7 I did exhibit personality features, behaviours or symptoms that had bipolar aspects, at least to a limited degree, or so it could be argued if not proved: (a) a lack of control of my emotions, impetuosity, lack of emotional restraint and (b) a far too intense activity threshold what is now called hyperactivity, mild mania or hypomania. I recall at the age of 12/13 exhibiting inappropriate or precocious sexual behaviour, although the particular manifestations only involved one groping episode and attempt to kiss that same girl who did not want to be kissed.

2.5.2 It was not until much later in life, though, that I began to see these aberrant childhood behaviours and new aberrations at puberty and during adolescence as possibly having a link with my future mental illness. It was not until I was 19 in 1963 that any characteristics of this illness became quite clearly apparent and, in retrospect, could be called part of a BPD and given that medical diagnosis. At the time no doctor would have given, or at least gave me, that diagnosis. Looking back to the age of 19 in October of 1963, I recall feeling a depression so deep it was like ‘a sickness unto death,’ never before experienced, like death not warmed over, as one could say colloquially. One can read about this intensity of depression in many fields of literature and of mental health. The desire to die was overwhelming, but little talked about to anyone, except perhaps my mother, although I honestly can not recall. She knew I was depressed but neither she nor I really understood its dynamics or its intensity. I think it was assumed that I would grow out of it. And I did. By December the depression began it to lift and I continued with my first year university studies.

2.5.3 These behaviours, this depression, at the age of 19 or any of my behaviour before that last year of my teenage life(1963-1964), did not result in my receiving any medical attention. The first formal diagnosis of my illness was labelled a schizo-affective disorder(SAD) in 1968. In retrospect, I now see the autumn of 1968 as the first formal mis-diagnosis of my BPD. At the age of 19, though, I was given lots of advice from religious to common-sensical: diet, exercise, prayer, vitamins, interesting leisure distractions/interests like horse-riding, watching TV, music, et cetera. After several months to several years, 1963 to 1968, the emotional aberrations disappeared or could be said to be sub-threshold at least for a time. My episodes over those years and in the years December 1977 to June 1980 seemed to exhibit quite separate and distinct tendencies and patterns.

2.5.4 Hypomania(H) was always characterized by elation and D was always characterized by varying degrees of very low moods. Such an observation seems now to be so obvious as hardly requiring a mention, but at the core of my experience of this problem was either D or H and the impact of their various symptoms. Within those five years 1963 to 1968, though, the permutations and combinations of emotional variation were enough to being tears to the eyes of a brass monkey, as my mother used to say and, as I say, looking back in retrospect. It was a miracle I ever got my degree and my teaching qualifications labouring under such emotional chaos from time to time and often, week after continuous week in a variegated pattern.

2.5.5 Sometimes there was a return of incapacitating symptoms; sometimes I simply exhibited impetuosity or lack of emotional restraint; at other times my moods were expansive, quasi-manic. Perhaps, as some of the BPD literature suggests, I was affected sporadically by the extremes of a psychomotor retardation and agitation which is characteristic of this illness. Combinatory, lateral, uneven, unusually sensitized thinking, particular sensitivity to energy levels and a state of increased awareness were all part of my experience in these five years. It is difficult to describe these five years in retrospect given the bizarre and chaotic nature of the experience within the context of a degree of normality and the inevitable routine and quotidian nature of life that went on inspite of everything, inspite of the emotional problems.
______________instalment #3 to follow at later date___________________

[RonPrice]

This is the 3rd in a series of instalments with my BPD story. For the few people who find the longer story useful--and any others--feel free to write, comment, criticize, evaluate--whatever...-Ron

2.5.6 In the years 1969 to December 1977 my BPD was sub-threshold, non-existent or not as extreme. I coped and my behaviour did not require or even suggest medical intervention. In the 1977 to 1980 episode, the next major episode, H and its various symptoms like elation and good feelings, were rare and varying intensities of D were common. The episode lasted from December 1977 to June 1980, some two-and-one-half years. The first episode had lasted off-and-on from October 1963 to December 1968, a little more than five years. This 2nd major episodic-period only lasted half the length of time as the 1st, but this was only due to the lithium treatment that put an end to my symptoms quick-smart. Without the lithium which I began to taker in the first week of May 1980—who knows what the BPD symptoms would have been?

2.5.7 In early December 1968 I had left the mental hospital in Whitby Ontario on a mild sedative. I think it was called valergan; but I’m not sure; I have forgotten its name after nearly 40 years. In the nine years from 1968 to 1977 I tried: exercise, diet, giving up smoking, sex, radiesthetics and hair analysis, jogging and play therapy, among a range of treatments to prevent or alleviate any incipient symptoms reoccurring.

2.5.8 In the episodes from 1977 through 1980 the constellation of: fear, paranoia(P) and the extremes of D were often as low as I had experienced in the sixties, in those chaotic years of that episode from 1963 to 1968. I experienced in those years 1977-1980 a range of emotional swings, but they were largely, at least as I recall looking back a quarter century later, at the D and P end of things. A psychiatrist in Ballarat prescribed stelazine or trifluoperazine, an antipsychotic drug. It was at first administered in early 1978 and it seemed to make things worse. In December 1978 I moved to Launceston with my wife and three children and, after a series of two or three quite severe emotional swings at both the H and the D end from January to May 1979, a psychiatrist at the Launceston General Hospital prescribed lithium. After just two or three days my symptoms were relieved never to return in the same form.

2.5.9 I include the above observations and comments on this second major episode because they throw some light on the first episode and place my childhood and adolescent experience of BPD, if indeed I had that disorder at all in those years, in a helpful perspective. It is helpful to me to express my disorder this way, that is in longitudinal terms as far back as my childhood, since this may be helpful to BPD sufferers. My account here may appear somewhat complex and labyrinthine for general readers and I would advise such readers not to try and follow all the permutations and combinations of my description of this disorder. My description is quite difficult for some to follow and for me to outline in detail and to understand in general. As I go about relating this story, I go about trying to place this narrative into some coherent form. It has taken this third edition, now in its seventeenth draft, to get some sense of coherence, some sense of continuity, into what some biographers and autobiographers sometimes call a ‘chaos narrative.’

2.6 From My First Episode of MD in 1963
To My First Institutionalized Care in 1968:

2.6.1 The episode in 1963 continued in a complex series of forms up to and including 1968, as I have outlined above. This episode was not diagnosed as either MD or BPD in those years. This episode, part of my first phase of BPD as I see it in retrospect, did not receive any professional psychiatric diagnosis until June of 1968. From June 1968 to November of that year I received institutional care in: the Frobisher Bay, now Iqaluit, General Hospital; the Verdun Psychiatric Hospital in Montreal; the Scarborough General Hospital in a Toronto suburb and the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital about a 30 minute drive from Toronto. The story of those years from 1963 to 1968 and those four psychiatric units and hospitals were my years of university study and the first year of full employment. The story of these years is long, stony and tortuous and I will not write the account of these five years in any more detail since no medical diagnosis was given to me in writing or verbally. I did receive a great deal of advice and types of treatment: (a) more exercise and prayer, (b) a better diet and sex, (c) 8 ECTs and types of therapy from talk to art and manual activities. I do write of these six months in these several facilities in my memoirs in much more detail than I do here. To write of it here would result in prolixity.

2.6.2 In June or July of 1968, though, one member of a battery of doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and other care givers who were then providing my treatment program in Montreal Canada at the Verdun Psychiatric Hospital took a personal interest in my case. He was the first attending psychiatrist in my life about whom I remember anything at all. He was a Baha’i, a religion that had its origins in Iran in 1844; he was one of perhaps 4000 Baha’is in Canada at the time and perhaps its only psychiatrist. He was himself at the outset of his own career in psychiatry. I had been serendipitously institutionalized here after the onset in late May of 1968 of an episode of BPD which was given no name at the time, although colloquially I recall it being said I had become “bushed” or, as they say in Australia, “gone tropo.”

2.6.3 I had been working with the Inuit at the time in Canada’s high Arctic as a grade three classroom teacher. Looking back it seems highly fortuitous that this first institutionalized care that I received was, in part, from a psychiatrist who shared the same belief system as I did, the Baha’i Faith. I remember him taking me out into the community to meet some of the Montreal Baha’is and their friends. Such an exercise, I assume, he felt was a normalizing experience.

2.6.4 I appreciate, as I say above, the interest, care and assistance shown by a long series of individuals, particularly the relatives and friends in my life, who over the years and as far back as 1963. In that year what I now see as the first clear episode of MD or BPD began to manifest itself. The professional work of those doctors and the personal assistance of those family members and friends has been invaluable and I want readers to appreciate the primacy I give to the work of these special people for their help and support, their saving me from what in any previous age and time period would have been a horrific, virtually end-of-normal-life experience. I want, too, to particularly emphasise the personal care-givers in my consanguineal and affinal families, that is my family of birth and marriage, especially my mother, my first wife and my second wife. These three people were there to help inspite of the difficulties they experienced as a result of their care-giving attitudes and supporting activities. They were absolutely critical and significant others in that wider social context of family, friends and doctors over the years.

2.6.5 I sojourned in these first five years, in that first episode from 1963 to 1968, in a public and private world that was new to me. From time to time and beginning arguably on 29 May 1968 I sojourned in a place no less strange to me than if I had been among an exotic jungle tribe in Africa. It is the duty of some cultural anthropologists to report on their exotic travels and field trips, whether among the indigenous peoples of this earth’s Antipodes or to equally remote recesses of human experience among other culturally diverse groups. The account I write here, though, is not so much anthropological; it does not give an emphasis to the eccentricities, the absurd and the bizarre which SAD, P, D, MD and BPD accounts often do; it does not attempt to make a comprehensive statement of my experience. I leave this for my autobiography/memoirs and readers can find the story buried there in occasional references among the 2500 pages much of which is now on the internet in different forms, short and long, paragraphs here and pages there.

2.6.6 I came as I say above, insensibly over several decades--and then only at some distant and abstract level--to associate the extremes of my BPD somewhat with the role of shamans among tribal, third world and animistic communities, people who relate their myths and their meanings by means of emotionally laden quasi-ecstatic visions. On the personal level, I discovered in myself unexpected patience, humility and hope. I learned to treat life as the most precious of gifts, infinitely vulnerable and precarious, to be infinitely prized and cherished. I had not become a shaman or a saint, though; I still suffered; I was still impatient; I did not always appreciate life; I still got depressed. I had journeyed with my body, although I don’t think with my soul, into an underworld and come back, more times than I care to tell and certainly more times than I tell of here. But I have survived and lived to tell the story. This is not always the case for people with SAD, D, MD or BPD.

2.6.7 Mine was a spiritual drama of sorts—on a psycho-neurological, a psycho-pharmacological, a schizo-affective level and in 1968 the first psychiatric diagnosis, some five years after the beginning of my first episode, resulted in my suffering, my illness, having at last a label, a medical diagnosis, a name attached to it: a mild-schizo-affective disorder, for which I use the acronym SAD in what has become a somewhat long account. This mild SAD I could, as I say, narrate as a drama in religious terms and describe it as a purgatorial dark night. But, briefly, it was both a pain in the neck and a gift of the gods, I can now say in retrospect. Whatever it was and however I interpret its meaning in my life, it has unquestionably been a key part of my life. But it was not all my life. I do not define all my life in terms of this disorder. This account is of that part, that small but important part. It is the centre of my chaos narrative as some students of autobiography call such accounts.
______________PART 4 TO COME AT A LATER DATE_____________________________

[Mattie Jo]

Before any one decides to report this post, it is his own personal experience.

[RonPrice]

Indeed It is, Jessica. It is all my own experience and it is a piece of writing I have been working on for years to get it as accurate as I can, as up-to-date and as useful as possible to others who have similar problems. Some sites appreciate the detail and the length and some do not. If it is out of context, not consistent with site conventions, or whatever, I am happy to edit it, have it deleted by moderators or administrators, bring it down to a more helpful size for those who prefer shorter posts.-Ron Price, Tasmania

[christine1955]

thank you for the info you put in your post. I have a 31 year old daughter who has bi polar and will not admit or take medicine so it is hard.

[RonPrice]

thanks, christine1955...it is for people like yourself for/to whom I post my long stories. BPD is a very long story that can not be covered in a line or two. I wish you well and, again, thank you for your positive repsonse.-Ron Price, Australia

[RonPrice]

After nearly a year, I post this 4th instalment for those like Christine1955 who may find this lengthy piece of writing of personal value.-Ron in Tasmania
-----------------------------

2.6.8 These behaviours, this depression, at the age of 19 or any of my behaviour before that last year of my teenage life(1963-1964), did not result in my receiving any medical attention. The first formal diagnosis of my illness was labelled a schizo-affective disorder(SAD) in 1968. This situation involved a serious risk of harm to myself or others and required what is termed involuntary commitment to hospital. This case involved a severe manic episode with dangerous behaviour, although not a depressive episode with suicidal ideation.

In retrospect, I now see the autumn of 1968 as the first formal mis-diagnosis of my BPD. At the age of 19, though, I was given lots of advice from religious to common-sensical: diet, exercise, prayer, vitamins, interesting leisure distractions/interests like horse-riding, watching TV, music, et cetera. After several months to several years, 1963 to 1968, the emotional aberrations disappeared or could be said to be sub-threshold at least for a time. My episodes over those years and in the years December 1977 to June 1980 seemed to exhibit quite separate and distinct tendencies and patterns.

2.6.9 Hypomania(H) was always characterized by elation and D was always characterized by varying degrees of very low moods. Such an observation seems now to be so obvious as hardly to require a mention, but at the core of my experience of this problem was either D or H and the impact of their various symptoms. The boundaries between normality and abnormality, health and pathology are also blurred and indistinct. In addition they shift from person to person, doctor to doctor and decade to decade making one’s understanding of the problem more complex, more difficult. Within those five years, 1963 to 1968 though, the permutations and combinations of emotional variation were enough to being tears to the eyes of a brass monkey, as my mother used to say. Looking back in retrospect at those last years of my formal education, I see it as a miracle that I ever got my degree and my teaching qualifications labouring under such emotional chaos from time to time and often, week after continuous week in a variegated pattern. Although the pharmaceuticalization of the post WW2 modern world had began in earnest by the 1960s, it had not taken off that earnestly for the behaviours and symptoms I exhibited back then to be treated by pharmaco-therapy.

2.6.10 Sometimes there was a return of incapacitating symptoms; sometimes I simply exhibited impetuosity or lack of emotional restraint; at other times my moods were expansive, quasi-manic. Perhaps, as some of the BPD literature suggests, I was affected sporadically by the extremes of a psychomotor retardation and agitation which is characteristic of this illness. Combinatory, lateral, uneven, unusually sensitized thinking, particular sensitivity to energy levels and a state of increased awareness were all part of my experience in these five years. It is difficult to describe these five years in retrospect given the bizarre and chaotic nature of the experience. Given, too, a general context of a degree of normality and the inevitable routine and quotidian nature of life that went on inspite of everything, inspite of the emotional problems makes the description, after forty years, difficult.

2.6.11 In the years 1969 to December 1977 the symptoms of my BPD were sub-threshold, non-existent or not as extreme. I coped and my behaviour did not require or even suggest medical intervention. In the 1977 to 1980 episode, the next major episode, H and its various symptoms like elation and good feelings, were rare and varying intensities of D were common. The episode lasted from December 1977 to June 1980, some two-and-one-half years. The first episode had lasted off-and-on from October 1963 to December 1968, a little more than five years. This second major episodic-period only lasted half the length of time as the 1st, but this was only due to the lithium treatment that put an end to my symptoms quick-smart. Without the lithium which I began to take in the first week of May 1980—who knows what the BPD symptoms would have been? The sixth leading cause of disability and lost years of healthy life for people aged 15-44 years in the developed world is BPD. I had lost only fifteen months of employment due to hospitalization(6/68-12/68 and 5/80-12/80), although much more time of varying degrees of decreased functioning. In addition, taking an early retirement at the age of 55 and going on a disability support pension at 57 until I was 65 could add another ten years onto this one year of unemployment due to BPD if I wanted to make a fully comprehensive statement of the affects of BPD on the total years of my unemployment.

2.6.12 In early December 1968 I had left the mental hospital in Whitby Ontario on a mild sedative. I think it was called valergan; but I’m not sure; I have forgotten its name after nearly 40 years. In the nine years from 1968 to 1977 I tried: exercise, diet, giving up smoking, sex, radiesthetics and hair analysis, jogging and play therapy, among a range of treatments to prevent or alleviate any incipient symptoms reoccurring.

2.6.13 In the episodes from 1977 through 1980 the constellation of: fear, paranoia(P) and the extremes of D were often as low as I had experienced in the sixties, in those chaotic years of that episode from 1963 to 1968. I experienced in those years 1977-1980 a range of emotional swings, but they were largely, at least as I recall looking back a quarter century later, at the D and P end of things. A psychiatrist in Ballarat prescribed stelazine or trifluoperazine, an antipsychotic drug. It was at first administered in early 1978 and it seemed to make things worse. In December 1978 I moved to Launceston with my wife and three children and, after a series of two or three quite severe emotional swings at both the H and the D end from January to May 1979, a psychiatrist at the Launceston General Hospital prescribed lithium. After just two or three days my symptoms were relieved never to return in the same form.

2.6.14 I include the above observations and comments on this second major episode because they throw some light on the first episode and place my childhood and adolescent experience of BPD, if indeed I had that disorder at all in those years, in a helpful perspective at least for me, if not for others who read this statement. Depressive episodes for those with BPD tend to have a median length about 6 months with manic episodes usually beginning abruptly and lasting for between 2 weeks and four to five months. My episodes of depression and mania were certainly within this range.

It is helpful to me to express my disorder this way, that is in longitudinal, retrospective, terms as far back as my childhood and this I hope will be helpful to other BPD sufferers and some readers of this document for other reasons. My account here may appear somewhat complex and labyrinthine for general readers and I would advise such readers not to try and follow all the permutations and combinations of my description of this disorder. My description is quite difficult for some to follow and for me to outline in detail and to understand in general. As I go about relating this story, I go about trying to place this narrative into some coherent form. It has taken these five editions over five years to get some sense of coherence, some sense of continuity, into what some biographers and autobiographers sometimes call a ‘chaos narrative.’

2.7 From My First Episode of MD in 1963
To My First Institutionalized Care in 1968:

2.7.1 The episode in 1963 continued in a complex series of forms up to and including 1968, as I have outlined above. This episode was not diagnosed as either MD or BPD in those years. This episode, part of my first phase of BPD as I see it in retrospect, did not receive any professional psychiatric diagnosis until June of 1968. From June 1968 to

[movin'on]

Originally Posted by RonPrice

Indeed It is, Jessica. It is all my own experience and it is a piece of writing I have been working on for years to get it as accurate as I can, as up-to-date and as useful as possible to others who have similar problems. Some sites appreciate the detail and the length and some do not. If it is out of context, not consistent with site conventions, or whatever, I am happy to edit it, have it deleted by moderators or administrators, bring it down to a more helpful size for those who prefer shorter posts.-Ron Price, Tasmania

I'm interested in your story, but don't have the concentration to read it as written, so I'd appreciate a condensed version. I've been Dx'd with bipolar depression (different from regular depression). I take a drug for it, although some days I forget. Yeah, it's affected my life, and I wish I didn't have to deal with it. I'm about to quit another job and wonder if I were on more meds if I could stick it out. I dunno. The longest I've held a job in years is for three years. This latest I've been in for four and a half months. I'm particularly interested in hearing how your work life has been.

[RonPrice]

As you say, movin'on, you're interested in my story, but don't have the concentration to read it as written. That is a common problem so---I advise you go to BPD sites where there are umpteen stories and many a condensed version. I post this long story for those who find long stories useful. Not everyone will find my post useful--I am aware of that....keep searching and don't give up.-Ron
------------------------
Instalment #5 Below:
--------------------
2.7.2 In June or July of 1968, though, one member of a battery of doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists and other care givers who were then providing my treatment program in Montreal Canada at the Verdun Psychiatric Hospital took a personal interest in my case. He was the first attending psychiatrist in my life about whom I remember anything at all. He was a Baha’i, a religion that had its origins in Iran in 1844; he was one of perhaps 4000 Baha’is in Canada at the time and perhaps its only psychiatrist. He was himself at the outset of his own career in psychiatry. I had been serendipitously institutionalized here after the onset in late May of 1968 of an episode of BPD which was given no name at the time, although colloquially I recall it being said I had become “bushed” or, as they say in Australia, “gone tropo.”

2.7.3 I had been working with the Inuit at the time in Canada’s high Arctic as a grade three classroom teacher. Looking back it seems highly fortuitous that this first institutionalized care that I received was, in part, from a psychiatrist who shared the same belief system as I did, the Baha’i Faith. I remember him taking me out into the community to meet some of the Montreal Baha’is and their friends. Such an exercise, I assume, he felt was a normalizing experience.

2.7.4 I appreciate, as I say above, the interest, care and assistance shown by a long series of individuals, particularly the relatives and friends in my life, who over the years and as far back as 1963. In that year what I now see as the first clear episode of MD or BPD began to manifest itself. The professional work of those doctors and the personal assistance of those family members and friends has been invaluable and I want readers to appreciate the primacy I give to the work of these special people for their help and support, their saving me from what in any previous age and time period would have been a horrific, virtually end-of-normal-life experience. I want, too, to particularly emphasise the personal care-givers in my consanguineal and affinal families, that is my family of birth and marriage, especially my mother, my first wife and my second wife. These three people were there to help inspite of the difficulties they experienced as a result of their care-giving attitudes and supporting activities. They were absolutely critical and significant others in that wider social context of family, friends and doctors over the years.

2.7.5 I sojourned in these first five years, in that first episode from 1963 to 1968, in a public and private world that was new to me. From time to time and beginning arguably on 29 May 1968 I sojourned in a place no less strange to me than if I had been among an exotic jungle tribe in Africa. It is the duty of some cultural anthropologists to report on their exotic travels and field trips, whether among the indigenous peoples of this earth’s Antipodes or to equally remote recesses of human experience among other culturally diverse groups. The account I write here, though, is not so much anthropological; it does not give an emphasis to the eccentricities, the absurd and the bizarre which SAD, P, D, MD and BPD accounts often do; it does not attempt to make a comprehensive statement of my experience. I leave this for my autobiography/memoirs and readers can find the story buried there in occasional references among the 2500 pages much of which is now on the internet in different forms, short and long, paragraphs here and pages there.
-----------instalment #6---to come at a later date----

[RonPrice]

As I say in the heading, No More of My Story---will be posted, unless there is some feedback. Mod cut: TOS violation