Coping with mental illness

BY RAFFY BOUDJIKANIAN

raffy.boudjikanian@transcontinental.ca

Do you know what Sir John A. Macdonald, Margot Kidder, Elizabeth Manley, Leonard Cohen, and Glenn Gould have in common?

Yes, they are all Canadian. They are also all celebrities. They have also suffered from different kinds of mental illnesses.

"They can be very positive members of society," said Lucie Discepola, director of the Friends for Mental Health organization based at the Elizabeth Russell Centre in Dorval.

With a mandate to help out the family and loved ones of people suffering from mental health illnesses cope with their lives, the organization is just now starting a new 12-week program dealing specifically with borderline mental personality disorder.

Borderline personality disorder, or BPD, is a form of mental illness characterized by mood swings, self-image and behavioural problems. "We're getting a lot more families who are dealing with this problem," Discepola said.

According to her, BPD is best thought of as a constant condition that the person suffering from it lives through. "It's part of the personality of the person," she said.

"They engage in high-risk behaviour, like having unprotected sex, drugs or alcohol," she said. They may also threaten to commit suicide.

This begins to take its toll on the victim's family or loved ones. "They always feel like they're walking on eggshells," Discepola said.

"They really counselled us, and informed us," said Doris, who did not wish to reveal her last name in order to protect her son, who has clinical schizophrenia. When she first took her son to the hospital, she was advised to seek help with Friends for Mental Health, Doris said. The organization has helped her cope with her son's condition, allowing her to understand his perspective. "Imagine, in your head there's a full room of 38 people talking to you at the same time," Doris explained. That is constantly the situation for her son, she said.

At the beginning, she would not know what to do when her son had one of his fits, she said. However, her meetings with Friends gradually helped her out. "My son will have to live with it for his whole life," she explained, so this made it all the more important for her to have a long-term strategy.

The organization's new help program, designed by psychologist Hélène Busque, will allow loved ones of those with this illness to examine their lives from their own points of view during eight meetings. After this first phase is over, families will then move along to create a plan that should implement changes in both how they behave with the BPD-diagnosed person and that person's behaviour.

Though there are several family-oriented mental health help organizations in Montreal, Friends for Mental Health is the only one of its kind in the West Island, according to Discepola. The non-profit charity organization celebrated its 25th anniversary last year.

Discepola said that one in five households in Quebec have someone who suffers from a type of mental illness, although this figure includes more minor ones such as clinical depression, as well. In the West Island, she estimated that around 50, 000 people have a kind of mental illness.

Though the lessons for families coping with someone who has BPD have already begun, it is not too late to register. Call 514-636-6885.