My name is Pat Morris. I have suffered from serious depression for the past 45 years. It has not been easy to get to where I am now but I am now at a point where I can speak with people and help them to understand what it’s like to live with a mental illness, what it means to ‘recover,’ and what can stand in the way of recovery.
After finally finishing my nurse’s training and becoming a RN, I chose to work in the operating room, first at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and then at two hospitals in Santa Monica California. In California, I also did my first job as a bedside nurse. I returned to Canada (Thunder Bay) in 1972 and earned my Bachelor of Science in Nursing at Lakehead University in 1975.
Despite ever-increasing bouts of depression, I taught nursing at the Adult Education Program at Confederation College. Government bed cutbacks and loss of jobs for college teachers meant a return to operating room nursing as supervisor at St. Joseph’s Hospital. During this time, my mental health was failing and in December of 1979, I seriously attempted suicide for the first of many times.
Then the stigma began in full force. I had experienced it to some degree when I was first hospitalized while in nurse’s training, but that was nothing to what the future years would bring.
My next 25 or so years were up and down, mostly down, with numerous hospitalizations and severe suffering. With the increasing illness, my self- esteem became totally lost. I began drinking and abusing my prescription drugs to escape from the symptoms of my illness.
As a nurse and with numerous long-staying hospitalizations I was able to see the discrimination suffered by people with a mental illness. I became involved with mental health organizations not only for my own support and keeping myself busy, but to learn what help was out there. I believe stigma is due to people not knowing enough about mental illness and with this lack of knowledge are very afraid. I hope to dispel this fear by speaking out and telling my story.
My family has not been able to accept or to try to understand my illness to this day. Only my sister has learned what I have been going through over these past years. I won the “Courage to Come Back Award” in 2002 from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto. This award is given out to people of Ontario who suffer from an addiction and/or mental illness and have used their experience to help others. It was an overwhelming experience and I gained some self-esteem and courage to speak openly with my sister, Peg.
To this day, I have a case manager with the Concurrent Disorders Program, who helps me, one on one, and has been there for me over the past 9 – 10 years. She keeps me on track and helps me when I find myself slipping on my road to recovery.
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