"Tina"

My friend and PSA colleague Elaine Hanzak - www.elainehanzak.co.uk - talks and writes powerfully and movingly about the debilitating effects of mental illness. In her specific case, it was pretty extreme post natal depression.

One of the points she made in a recent talk that I attended was that 25% of the population will at some time in their life suffer from some form of mental illness. So you know the old joke: if the three people with you are "normal"...

I took it upon myself to suggest to Elaine afterwards that her figures were wrong. Really, the figure should be closer to 75% if you take account of people who suffer from the consequences of mental illness. Immediate family, friends, neighbours, colleagues, victims of crime... The list goes on and on.

We don't seem much further forward in treating mental illness today that we were 50 years ago. I have been fortunate not to have suffered from mental illness myself ( I exclude feeling low when the world seemed against me) but have certainly suffered hugely as a result of having a partner with mental illness.

It's easy to turn posts like this into theses, so I'll try and keep it reasonably brief. When I first met Tina, it was clear she had some problems. But she was also a really lovely person in desperate need of "rescuing" and I suppose I saw myself as the knight in shining armour.

Our first month together was great. She didn't have a drink, was super company, very supportive of my business, we enjoyed each others company and really clicked with each other. We went out with her mother and her partner (not Tina's dad) for a birthday meal. Her mum was delighted with how she had improved, I was the best thing that had ever happened to her, at last she'd found someone she could be happy with, etc., etc.

Next day, she was drunk as a skunk. She couldn't cope with things going well. She didn't deserve happiness. She needed to be punished...

Over the next year, I saw a behaviour pattern emerging which I can now say with some certainty was manic depression manifesting itself. She'd have a period where she was pretty low, then a period of complete normality, then a period where she got stressed out, panicky, paranoid, insanely jealous, irrational... She couldn't cope with that, so she drunk.

Something Elaine said in her talk really hit home. "You get to a point where you just need to switch your brain off."

Tina switched her brain off with alcohol. She'd done it for years before I met her. The initial trigger was a double whammy. She had a large part of her bowel removed and was told she may need a colostomy bag if it got any worse; and she had a hysterectomy that meant she would go through life childless when she desperately wanted to be a mother. If that wasn't bad enough, after the bowel operation her stitching split open and she literally saw inside her own body and it totally freaked her out. I could go on, but you probably get the picture.

When Tina was sober and in a relationship with me, she desperately sought help. She got none. It's so much easier for the system to just classify someone as an alcoholic, spin the line about "when you hit rock bottom, you'll stop" and leave them to their own devices.

I begged the psychiatrist attached to the drugs and alcohol support team to accept that she was manic depressive, properly diagnose her and then treat her. He refused. Professional pride at admitting he got it wrong? Incompetence? Awareness of budgetary limitations? Your guess is as good as mine. I reckon it was probably a bit of all three.

When I put my concerns in writing, it was treated as a complaint. Good, I thought, now I can draw attention to the situation and get her treated. Wrong, you naive fool! The complaints system was merely a defence shield, not an investigative process. They said all the right things, patted me on the shoulder, and did absolutely nothing different. Except, I guess, make absolutely sure that they NEVER properly diagnosed her, admit their error, and leave themselves open to a law suit.

I was only a layman. How DARE I suggest a diagnosis! You need a qualification to do that!

I've just read that back and it sounds almost paranoid. But that's what happened. I was lied to and lied about when I complained to the Healthcare Commission which, incidentally, "investigated" my complaint nine months after receiving it without even interviewing me or contacting me as part of its process.

Tina got progressively worse. The low/normal/manic cycle got shorter and shorter, which of course meant that she was drinking more and more frequently, getting more and more addicted to alcohol, and on a downward spiral.

When drunk she would make false 999 calls (she fantasised that she was a police informer and that all the local police were her friends); assault me and then accuse me of assault when I blocked her blows; come into my business premises drunk and insult all my customers and staff; come to my house and smash windows; burgle my house when I was at work... I could go on.

Once, a bypasser found her comatose round the back of my gym after dark on a freezing cold November evening and my duty manager called 999. She got her into the warm, the paramedic came, looked at her, said "It's only bloody Tina Jones", cancelled the ambulance and walked out, leaving the police to deal with the situation. I put that in because she could have been dying, yet that incident neatly summed up the whole NHS's attitude towards her.

So what could they have done differently?

Well, alcoholics are real people with real feelings too. Yet the NHS labels them and in so doing effectively dehumanises them. They're not people suffering and in need of help. They're alcoholics. Alcoholism is a symptom of a much deeper problem. It was no good telling Tina to stop drinking and then they would help, because she couldn't stop drinking until the reasons why she was drinking were addressed. By not addressing the issues and placing the onus on her, they were effectively sentencing her to a slow, undignified, painful death. A caring profession? Don't make me laugh! I ran into a procession of box tickers earning a wage.

And the promises of help once she sobered up were shallow and meaningless. Twice in the three years of our on/off relationship I managed to keep Tina sober for over six weeks. She begged for help during these periods. I tried everything I could to get her help. There was none. So she started drinking again, at which point the stop drinking and then we'll help you platitudes restarted. And I got arrested after being accused of assault by a serial false complainer that police knew to be such!

As you might guess, I saw a different side of life during my time with Tina. I found the caring services to be an uncaring disgrace, with a few shining exceptions.

In the USA, they use a "dual diagnosis" approach. Briefly, half of all alcoholics have mental health problems; half of the people with mental health problems self medicate with alcohol and/or drugs. They have recognised that to treat people effectively they need staff who understand both mental health issues and alcohol/substance abuse issues.

In this country, we label people as either mentally ill or alcoholics, as if the two conditions are totally separate. Staff are either trained as mental health workers or substance abuse workers. Mental health workers are not experts in substance abuse, and vice versa. They all play around at the fringes of the problem, earn a good salary for doing so, and at night go home to their nice warm beds in their nice warm houses with not a second thought for the Tinas of this work who live under bushes, on a sofa if they can persuade another alcoholic to put them up for the night, or somewhere else equally risky. Three times she's been found lying comatose on a darkened road. Three times she's been lucky.

She's been to prison for burgling my house. Did she get help there? "It's not worth starting you on a programme, you're only here for 4 weeks and that's not nearly long enough". So they do nothing, and release her 4 weeks later knowing what she'll do. And sure enough, she comes out and within 2 hours she's so drunk she can't stand up. Hey Presto! Back to square 1.

And who did this hopeless creature start out as? A piss artist who had it coming? Not quite. In the late '80s, she was a self employed financial consultant earning up to £6,000 a month; she owned properties in Preston Brook, Cheshire and Crowborough, Sussex; she drove a nice new white 3 Series BMW - which she got when she parted with her Jaguar XJS that only did 12 to the gallon. On nights out with the girls, she was the designated driver who didn't drink. And she was a part time model to boot. Gorgeous, intelligent, good company, the whole package. Last I heard, she was sleeping rough and almost permanently drunk.

Do I still miss her? Too right! Bitter? You bet I am. And angry. Nobody sets out to be mentally ill or be an alcoholic. It happens! There but for the grace of God go I. Or you. Or someone you love.

When Tina's mum died, she promised her remains, in the Chapel of Rest, that her drinking days were over. Less than a week later, her brain needed switching off again. Thanks for helping me to understand, Elaine.