Michele Gyselinck

  Hmmmmmmm.  I'm NOT ready to say that.  Maybe he is a goner but he's caused enough trauma in my life that I'm VERY reticent to challenge him to do more.  If you think you can handle it, more power to you, but I don't.  I'm fighting off a bronchitis right now that developed following the conference in Niagara Falls, and although I'm not coughing too much so far today I did a lot earlier this week, especially on Monday when I went to a walk-in clinic and waited for six hours on a little chair while coughing my lungs off, and the doctor didn't even prescribe antibiotics.  He prescribed pumps and stuff to clear my sinuses and told me to go back if things didn't improve.  

But last night at my mom's place my sister said that when she went to that clinic with a broken wrist the doctor did not prescribe X-Rays, and when they did the radiologist did not see the fracture, so they had her do physiotherapy on a broken wrist, and she could not sleep at night because of the pain.  She thought she was a wimp because they kept saying there was no fracture.  When the fracture was finally diagnosed at a teaching hospital they had to operate her and put screws and metal plates in, and now her movement with that wrist is restricted because of the incompetence at that clinic.

 So this morning I called my doctor's office for an appointment and got one for Monday morning.  If you would pray that I could make it without having to go to a walk-in clinic again, I'd appreciate it.  I didn't enjoy the experience.

 Even trying to get help for an adult family member who is psychotic and paranoid and refuses that their psychiatrist inform the family is difficult.  As soon as the patient is 18 or over they are considered able to decide for themselves, even if they obviously aren't.  A cousin of mine who was suffering from paranoid psychosis would not cooperate with her treatment plan as proposed by her doctor, and seeing signs in tree branches that her landlords wanted to kill her, she broke her lease every three months and moved before they'd have time to carry out their somber plans.  Eventually, she killed the one child she'd ever had by drowning the girl in the bathtub after drugging her so the kid would not resist.  And then she tried to kill herself by throwing herself in the nearest river.  (Montreal is an island located between two rivers.  The Rivière des Prairies on the north side and the St.Lawrence on the south.)  When she didn't drown fast enough to her taste, she got out of the water and walked to the nearest house where she was arrested after she'd told the owners her story and they called the police.  After that she fired one lawyer after another as soon as they suggested she get treated for her obvious disorder, because she wasn't aware of being ill.  Psychosis will pull that trick on people. Not all people with psychotic disorders have what is referred to as anosognosia, a term borrowed from neurology to describe the sequels suffered by some stroke victims where they are not aware of having lost abilities, but it is believed that 50% of people with schizophrenia and other forms of psychoses are afflicted in this way.  If it can comfort their close relatives and caregivers, they don't refuse to cooperate just to aggravate you.  In those cases they really don't believe they're ill.

Anyway, at her trial, the Crown prosecutor recommended she be sent to the Philippe Pinel Institute, a prison for the criminally insane, but she refused and ended up in a regular federal penitentiary for women, where she ultimately died by killing herself after three failed attempts.  

Fortunately, not all psychiatric patients suffer such tragic fates.  I am one of the fortunate few who had the symptoms hard enough to know what I'm talking about yet mild enough to be able to talk about the experience.  Some of those who know they're ill are just too severely afflicted to be able to talk about their illness in a cogent manner, or they started being ill at such a young age that it prevented them from getting an education because their symptoms interfered with concentration.  I know from personal experience how ineffective studying for a test can be when you haven't slept a full night in weeks and you're hearing voices.  It doesn't work. I'm writing this so that those who feel frustrated by trying to help mentally ill people and don't get any cooperation from the system will know that they are not the problem.  A system that considers adult people with mental illnesses in a psychotic state as competent to decide whether they need help or not, and entitled to have their privacy respected when they obviously need outside intervention is the problem.  Our system of individual rights was not designed for such patients.

 The book of Lamentations, especially Lamentations 3:19-33 which is my preferred text.  It is the text that speaks the most to my experience with schizophrenia.

I hope so.  Although I was never abused sexually on university campuses, or anywhere else for that matter, I believe that sweeping any kind of abuse, and especially sexual abuse under the carpet is never the right approach.  The Roman Catholic Church tried it and it became a huge scandal that comedians like Bill Maher still joke about.  YoU'd think other denominations from their error, but instead it seems they keep doing the same thing, and insanity has been defined as always doing the same thing while expecting different results.  That begs the question: Are religious institutions sane when they keep making the same errors that others have made before them?

  Unfortunately, since I live in Canada, I can't do much about this.  However, I have shared it on Facebook for my American friends.

 As DC Regional Advocate for Classis Eastern Canada and church advocate for my own congregation, I could tell you the problem is similar in that people assume that if I handle the case, they're off the hook and don't have to do anything to educate or sensitize themselves to the obstacles that people with various disabilities encounter in a church building where the only accommodations made are for people using wheelchairs to get around. And even then someone using a wheelchair who would like to participate in a service by doing a reading would not be able to access the stage because there is no ramp, and when I suggested one be built I was told, "What's the point?  We don't have anyone using a wheelchair in our church."  People who have never experienced abuse are as clueless as those who have never been sick other than with a cold, if that, to the needs of those who suffer from exclusion either because of abuse or disability, and the most frustrating feeling is that they don't even WANT to know.  Sometimes it feels like a slap in the face, or as if they told us to our face that they don't give a damn.  Maybe it's because the questions that people who have been abused ask make them anxious and to feel threatened (cf "Where Was God?), so they get knee-jerk reactions and run away to protect their feeble faith that can't handle challenges?  Whatever the issues some people resort to avoidance not to have to change their own attitudes, let alone doing anything to change abusive situations or situations that shut people with disabilities out of their buildings and faith communities.

First, mental illness has nothing to do with merit, so to imply that other people deserve to suffer from depression because they aren't as helpful as he was is cruel and adds a burden that they don't need.

Second, the reason he was able to help so many people is probably BECAUSE he suffered from depression himself. The pain of mental illness has spurred many sufferers to help others in a way physical pain may not have.  There is something about mental anguish only those who have been through it can understand in a world where stigma still holds people back from seeking help.  So many people who don't know what it's like to suffer from a mental illness still heap shame on those who do.  So if people like this pastor came out and spoke about their pain more willingly, they would help even more people than he did by keeping it a secret.

 We, in the Western world, need to get rid of the notion that health, wealth and merit are somehow related.  Those who preach the Health and Wealth Gospel would have us believe that they are, and that if you're a Christian AND sick or poor it's your own fault because you lack faith or you have unconfessed sins you need to get rid of.  That is BULL.... When I began to have symptoms I confessed a host of sins, both real and imagined, and the symptoms NEVER went away.  Job's friends believed he was guilty of some evil, and they harassed him about it to the point that God demanded they offer sacrifices before Job could pray for them to be forgiven.  The Lord NEVER promised we would enjoy health and wealth in this life, so let's stop assuming there is a connection between health--mental or otherwise--and being a faithful servant of the Lord.  I was not given ANY guarantees when I made profession of faith in the Montreal CRC at the age of 18 other than to expect suffering.  Nor was I told in what form it would come.  Apparently, the devil doesn't scorn causing believers to become mentally ill if it can add to their suffering through the lack of compassion of other Christians.  That way he gets a bigger bang for his trouble.

Thanks Mark.

Hi Brother! Welcome to the gang.

You’re welcome.

And I will miss you too, Staci.  So many times you solved my problems with accessing my blogs because I was ending on pages that said, « Not found «  or something like that.  I hope that whoever takes over will be as helpful as you have been.  Best wishes for your next move.