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Carer Watch.com / Testimonies / Mental Health / ESA I want government ministers to understand mental illness

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Jason

# Posted: 25 May 2009 01:41
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I worked for the same large, very well known, communications company from the age of seventeen and had worked my way up through the ranks. Before I became ill, at the age of 35, I used to look at my older colleagues who were a few years from retirement and wonder how they would cope when that final day crept up on them. I loved my job and the concept of retirement was beyond my comprehension Little did I know that that day would pounce on me before it laid it's claim to any of them.
I was so desperate to keep working that I persuaded my upper managers to let me come back to work for a trial period while I was officially on 'sick leave'. Considering the position I was in and the major damage I could have caused to the company I must salute the bravery of those people who put their lucrative jobs on the line to try and help me.
During this period I found it a struggle while managing to avoid any mistakes ( it was a pure science - no mistakes allowed!).
A couple of days before I was due to go back to work 'officially' I crashed and ended up in hospital for five months.
It is now eighteen years later and I never worked since. I miss it and I also miss the person I used to be - the one who enjoyed the challenges and the feeling of self respect.
My story is not a plea for pity - it is a statement of the little understood
transmogrification which people with severe mental health problems go through. A paradigm shift in conciousness which even the vast majority of the elite of psychiatric academia (never mind government ministers) could never appreciate unless they fall foul of the same demons and, if so, are most likely, shunted into the sidings of the 'unlistened to' or even the 'forgotten'.
The term 'changing your mind' is a well used phrase and is, of course, harmless, innocuous and has a right to it's place in our language - it is a voluntary change in lucid thought patterns.
Unfortunately - in mental health terms - a change of mind is not a choice - it is a fact. Mental illness changes your mind against your wishes - whether realised or not.
I want my mind to be the way it was and I would do anything to achieve that.
At this moment I can never imagine being able to work again - a thought that tears my soul apart.
If the government intend to put me through torture of review after review and put scepticism before humanity then I think I will just give up and 'shuttle off my mortal coil' -
" Oh to just have a visible disability! "

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