She tucked her hair behind her ear and said, ‘You must be conversant with statements like, It is all in your head, anxiety is fake. Come on now, move on and pull yourselves together. You’re young, what do you have to be stressed over? Why are you seeing a psychologist, have you gone mad? Therapy is a waste of time, why don’t you just take a pill, if at all it is serious.’ With a heavy sigh, she lifted her mug of coffee from the kitchen counter and went near the window of the drawing room, which was exquisitely decorated with a Buddhist wind chime, a number of potted plants placed in a row on the pane. She insisted me to take a sip of the fruit juice she offered and then carry on with the interview.
This was an informal, semi-structured, one to one interview with Ms Kiara, who is currently putting up in Bangalore and is originally from Nainital, Uttarakhand. She had come down to the city for her bachelor’s degree, following which she was pursuing Master’s in Clinical Psychology. She had to discontinue her course due to certain health concerns. At present, she is working as a psychology Facilitator in an International school. As instructed by my team members, I had to take her interview for an academic purpose. The assignment that we had to work on dealt with marginalised people and we chose mentally ill people due to a team member’s first hand experience. Kiara happened to be her sister and I was given the role of the Interviewer.
At first I wanted her to tell me if she ever felt prejudiced. She promptly said, ‘Yes, I have’. When she was asked to elaborate on what ground, she asserted how most people reacted to her illness with a sense of discrimination. Kiara was going through recurrent panic attacks since a couple of months, after almost 6-7 years, until it became very severe in the mid of November, 2019, when it was diagnosed as an anxiety disorder by a psychiatrist of a reputed hospital. She explained how, in the initial stage, the medical professionals themselves could not comprehend what exactly is happening. This could be because once she started anticipating her panic attacks, she voluntarily tried controlling, which had a physical manifestation of feeling completely breathless. Tips like ‘Try to blow in a paper bag whenever you feel breathless.’ Probably they were unable to understand the intensity to which she was already hurt, or perhaps they were oblivious about it. Being oblivious to such situations may either be because of lack of awareness, or since these issues are highly tabooed in our society.
She claimed that, even in psychiatric wards or hospitals, one may feel alienated on the basis of the classification of disorders. In a psychiatric ward or health care centre, a notion exists that anything more serious has to do with psychosis where in a person’s reality is completely distorted. Hence, someone suffering from any kind of neurosis is comparatively given lesser importance. For e.g. A Schizophrenic or someone with a major personality disorder will be given higher urgency when compared to someone with a mood disorder or a stress disorder.
Kiara had a difficult past consisting of a number of traumas which were incompletely treated at that point of time. She was always considered to be strong enough to never give up. Neither did she believe in bothering others. But what she never realised was that, there were numerous internal conflicts which remained unresolved, colossal amount of pain that remained unaddressed. Her wounds that go back to 7 years are fresh enough to bleed, every time snacked.
For years, tremendous amount of pain was accumulating within and now it had reached the rim. Hence, as soon as an immediate cause took place, the signs of panic attack started showing up. Due to her regular breathlessness, she was rushed to the emergency wing of the most proclaimed health care centres of the city almost every night. It is really sad that the only thing done was to inject various groups of mood- regulators or anti-anxiety all of which would induce a sedating tendency and discharge her from the emergency. Following this, she mostly felt drowsy and her limbs were numbed. Later, the attack became more frequent, chronic and acute. She had to be admitted to a prestigious medical college and hospital, where in she was misdiagnosed with anxiety disorder. Being discharged after weeks, there occurred a whole new symptom of head banging or head pulling which was mostly a result of the negative prognosis. She explained further and said ‘In such a condition, the patient abruptly starts banging his head almost everywhere. In my case, I also had multiple head injuries.’ Her eyes looked slightly moist, while she was elaborating on the ‘Head pulling symptom’. She realised that I felt slightly hesitant, so she comforted me saying that it took her a lot to come to this phase of life where she can openly talk about it, with a smile on her face. If she does not complete her story, I will miss out on the true essence of it. She exclaimed that she is absolutely ok and I can carry on.
Kiara seemed to have an aesthetic taste of local handicrafts and interior designing. I noticed that she constantly kept re-arranging the showpieces kept beside the book rack and changing the flower that were kept in the vase. She went to the balcony and asked her to join me there. ‘You said you were misdiagnosed. So, in that case, did the medications have any negative impact on you? I asked. As an answer to this she stated that allopathy medicines do have side effects, but talking about psychiatric medicines, it is almost inevitable. There might be a group of medicines which develops nausea in the individual where in another group of medicine may make you feel drowsy. After a point of time you only have to decide which you are tolerant to. Gradually, you get used to it.
‘My family was back in Nainital when I was experiencing all of this.’ Kiara said, when asked about how her family reacted to this. ‘They were astonished to know that I’m facing something like this since they considered me as a tenacious soul. They were awfully nervous and tensed as they were unable to make it to Bangalore. But, there is always a difference between being physically present and communicating virtually. The elderly people at home thought this had something to do with supernatural activities. Moreover, the ultimate down heartening fact was, their assumption of a Psychology student being more prone to psychotic propensity.’ She added. She smirked ‘Perhaps, they were completely blinded by their own thoughts and fear to understand what I was withstanding. ‘
Kiara then took me to her art room, which was filled with novels, journals, alluring room accessories, bohemian decors, music speakers, painting canvases, portraits, wine glasses, an imported packaged coffin nail. A ‘Ghungroo’ was placed on the furthermost shelf. Moksha, a jet black Pit-bull, her only room mate was peacefully sleeping on the carpet. I wanted to wind up the interview with my last question. ‘What is that anyone in your situation would expect at that point of time?’ I asked. With a sparkling smile on her face, she asseverated, ‘I expected nothing special. After all the efforts that me and my people made, the misdiagnosis was unexpected and so was the prejudice.’
Kiara was a charming young lady with an unique disposition. She had an artistic temperament and an extremely affectionate nature. As an interviewer and someone belonging to the mental health field, I did have an idea about how tremendous and invisible psychological pain could be and how often it goes neglected. But this particular interview did give me an exposure and insight to quite a few rarely know facts about the reality. Even when such conditions have physical manifestations, people would impose the root cause to be something physiological. After all of this, if at all the root cause is also found to be mental, either they would be rigid in their actions or they would choose not to help much.
The despicable conclusion of this interview is that medical professionals themselves discriminate against mentally ill patients. They are mostly, too reluctant to make out how serious mental illness and issues related to it could be. Consequently they impose anatomical causes repeatedly. Kiara had said ‘I never expected sympathy, it does not help. What helps is empathy, which only your people can give you and I have the best of them with me’.
No Comments
Leave a comment Cancel