Mental disorder - A disease or A Social Stigma

I am not sure, if this is the right place to post this. Kindly move my post to the correct forum.
This is about my experience in my hostel life during graduation. My college was located in a hill station, so all through the year the climate will be either cold with wind or cold with rain. I was staying in a pg on first floor and our owner was staying at the ground floor of the house. Its about my friend Shweta. Let me introduce her to you.



Shweta –A very cheerful and full of life person. She was three year elder to me and was like my sister. A very caring and responsible person. A matured person for her age. She had many certificates in her kitty, be it sports, knitting or mushroom farming. (Yes from all the fields) She was the retired Major of NCC and has participated in many camps and training. (So you got from where she got all the maturity and discipline in her life.) I personally admire defense people and so had an admiration towards her also. She was a trained singer and a regular practitioner of Yoga.



We were in the first year of our graduation. There were twelve of us in the hostel. As this was our first hostel experience, staying away from the coziness of our own homes except Shweta, we all use to approach her for all our queries, worries, tensions and everything. She used to help and guide us to do our daily chores in pg. From maintaining the finance, to paying the bills and to deciding the food menu, Shweta will take care of everything single handedly and will take care of us as her sisters. Everything was fine in the beginning. We always use to praise her and even our landlady was impressed by her. She had an air of ease in her behavior which makes everyone get comfortable with her on first interaction itself. Everything was going smoothly.




After few months, I started getting irritated with Shweta. She was becoming too domineering sometimes. She would interfere in each and every thing making me annoyed. Later I noticed that, its not only me, others are also feeling offended and irritated like me. We even discussed our situations with each other’s, and blamed ourselves for giving all the authority to Shweta in the beginning. (Deep down I knew she was not like this in the beginning. Something has changed recently.)



Shweta started behaving weirdly in room and in college also. Everyone in college also noticed her strange behavioral change. She was becoming more loud and bossy. She started speaking or rather preaching on different topics and about different people. She will always mention about some fathers and preachers those who have influenced her and their good deeds. She will force us to listen to her and accept whatever she says. In between I had few fights also with her.




On a holiday, our land lady has gone to church in the morning. Shweta declared in the morning that today we all will be going to college library and learn something new. I knew that it’s a good idea and in fact a very noble idea. But I was not in mood that day to go anywhere. I had made my mind to sit at room and relax, so I declined politely. To which she started forcing and shouting at me. She got very angry and even hit me for disobeying her. I was shocked and in fact everyone present there was shocked by her sudden outburst. I couldn’t control my tears. She started pushing her body on me and was asking for a positive answer. Her eyes were red and I could see a thick cloud of rage on her face. I was so petrified. I looked at my other roommates, they were all stand still, too shocked and numb after seeing this abrupt change in her behavior and body language.



She was squeezing me with the wall and was hurting me, I tried pushing her, but she had an enormous amount of energy. I couldn’t move. It was paining, I pushed her hard with all the strength and ran to my room. I locked myself inside the room. She was banging my door like mad but I didn’t open and was praying for aunty to return. She banged and abused me. After some time banging stopped and I heard her steps moving away from my room. I was too afraid to open the room so I decided to wait till aunty comes.



I was not sure where my other roomies were at that time, later I came to know that they also ran away and locked themselves in a single room. By lunch time, aunty returned from church. She came to our room with lunch and called out our names. I slowly came out of my room and others also. But Shweta was nowhere to be seen. I looked at my roomies even they were not aware. We were wandering about Shweta and Aunty asked why didn’t you guys accompanied Shweta to Church?



“To Church?” we all asked in unison. Seeing the doubtful expression on our face, Aunty said, ‘Yes church, Shweta is there in church. Why are you behaving so strangely?” We explained her everything. She felt sorry for me and asked if I am ok.




Shweta returned back by evening. Aunty questioned her about morning for which she apologized to me and said she just lost her temper and will not repeat it again with a smile. I couldn’t trust her and the sly smile on her face made me more nervous. I became more cautious and kept myself away from her all the time.




Meanwhile Shweta has showed many such tantrums and as a result she was left alone. She was always very hyper and overexcited about everything. If anybody tries to talk to her about her behavior or contradict with her ideas, she would pick up a fight with them. Nobody interacted with her, she was always alone writing something in a set of paper. She has written down something in a bunch of papers, might 25-30 sheet papers, which she later sent by post to her old friend. We were all curious about this but were not having enough courage to ask her, so we left this topic. We have completely lost or forgotten about our old, friendly, caring Shweta.




Soon it was Christmas holidays and we all packed our bags to go home. We all were planning to board evening train to reach our home. Just before starting Shweta declared that she is not coming with us and will be staying in pg itself. As none of us was interested in her anymore, we didn’t even bothered to ask her the reason. I reached home next day morning and called up Aunty to inform her. She told me that they have somehow managed to convince Shweta to go home. Early morning uncle has dropped her to the nearest bus stand and even made her board a direct bus to her hometown. He even paid for the ticket and asked the conductor to take good care for her as she was travelling alone. I was not interested in this topic anymore as I have reached my sweet home away from all these tension. My favorite vacation point is my own home. Nothing can be so relaxing and filled with positive energy than my own home.




On Christmas day when I called Aunty, She gave me this shocking news. On the day when Shweta was made to board the bus, she was very hyper in the morning. She got up at 3 in the morning and started playing music at very high volume. By 5 when the girl from nearby home asked her to reduce the volume Shweta became very violent. This made aunty more nervous. So they somehow convinced her to go home and made her board the bus. But Shweta got down from the bus on the next bus stand. When conductor questioned her as it was not her destination stop as mentioned while taking the ticket, she got angry on him and left. One of uncle’s friend was in bus and has witnessed all these, smelling something fishy he called up uncle and informed him about her getting down in a different bus station.



Uncle was unsure what to do and the best thing he did was called up her parents and informed them. Shweta’s father in his late sixties, together with her maternal uncle and cousin brother started towards the bus stand where she got down, it was almost 4hours from her place. On the way they were checking for all the buses. By Gods grace, they found her in one of the buses. The bus has been stopped in between as a girl was fighting with the conductor when asked for ticket. It was Shweta. She was not having money with her and she was arguing with the conductor for the same reason.




When she saw her father and uncle, she got panicked and try to run away from there. Few men in bus, understood the situation and caught her and tried to stop her till her father came. She howled and shouted, she was using all her energy to release herself. And suddenly her energy level dropped to zero and she fainted. She was directly taken into the hospital. After initial diagnosis Doctors told that she has lost her mental stability. It was by sheer luck that they got her on that day. As she was almost forgetting everything and if she had gone somewhere else then she would have totally forgotten herself and God knows what would have happened then.




After Christmas holidays, she took an extended holiday for a couple of months. When she came back, she was a different person. Very week and always exhausted. The medicines she was taking were very strong and were taking a toll on her. She was always sleepy and dozing off. Her body has become so subtle that she was not even able to hold a glass properly, without shivering. She was not able to attend regular classes due to overdose medicines. Her academic graph has also declined. She hardly smiles now as she is too tired to even smile.

We all were very sorry for her and more than that we were guilty for behaving rudely with her when she was ill. She helped us always and when it was our turn to help her we left her alone. When she wanted our support we ignored and hurt her.

This was not happening with her for the first time. Her parents knew about her disease. If her parents had informed at least one of us about it, we would have taken her symptoms more seriously. She would not have lost all these months of her life to a dreadful disease. She wouldn’t have to undergo the painstaking treatment and severe medicines. More than that we wouldn’t have lost out cheerful, caring and smiling friend.



The mental disorder can happen with anyone. Its just a disease which can be cured easily if treated at the correct time. Unfortunately in our society it is considered as a social stigma. People often hide it from others. And this causes lack of awareness. Most of us have never seen or interacted with a person suffering from such disease in the whole life. And thus we will never be able to identify this disease even if we are staying with that person. The same happened with us.




I always think, if I knew about her disease in the beginning, I wouldn’t have behaved like this to her. I would have tried to give her more support and care. At least I would not be living with the burden of guilt that I fought with her when she was ill. It was her disease which was fighting with me and instead of helping her I hurt her.

 

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The above message was posted by mistake.:hide: Kindly ignore it.

 

bipolar disorder? Can you tell me more about it?