YOU writer’s battle with depression
YOU’s Pieter van Zyl recently found himself in hospital with depression and anxiety. Here he describes his road to recovery and asks experts for advice for fellow sufferers
SHE was one of the world’s most respected fashion designers and he was a high-flying chef. Wealthy and successful, Kate Spade (55) and Anthony Bourdain (61) both seemed to have everything to live for – which was why news of their suicides has left fans reeling.
Their shock deaths – both by hanging and within days of each other – have served to highlight how depression can affect anyone, even those who seemingly have it all.
I find myself thinking of them often as I lie between the crisp white sheets in Ward G, the psychiatric section of a private hospital in Cape Town, and as I do I realise how lucky I am. If only, like me, they’d received help in time.
For three days I could feel it coming on, like a cold. An invisible fist around my heart, my chest tight. From the moment I wake the panic attacks hit. I feel I can’t breathe. In the gym I almost collapse. I become dizzy in the shower.
A soul-crushing despondency lurks deep inside me. I start crying out of the blue and can’t stop. For the first time in my life I consider committing suicide. Tablets? Or should I jump from the roof of my office building? I can’t decide.
Fortunately I have a check-up scheduled with my psychiatrist and he quickly picks up that something is wrong – and that, in a nutshell, is how I landed up here in Ward G.
I’m one of the lucky ones. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), about a million lives are lost to suicide every year – most deaths resulting from undiagnosed or untreated depression.
In South Africa about 500 people kill themselves every year, according to information gleaned from death certificates. But highly respected nonprofit fact-checking organisation Africa Check puts the figure much higher – in 2012 alone it recorded an estimated 6 133 suicides.
YOU’RE in the best place you could possibly be,” says one of my roommates, a political science student. It’s as if he can read my mind.
“Do you want to hurt yourself?” the student nurse asks. It’s one of a long list of questions I have to answer while completing my admission. “No, I want to live,” I reply. “Why did it happen?” “Because I’ve inherited depression and anxiety disorder.”
Now I’m sitting – with a tranquilliser starting to take effect – in a consulting room with my psychiatrist, who’s looking through the pile of pills I have in my possession.
Only later would I find out there were certain triggers for the depression and
anxiety that turned my life upside down. The worst of them being that I was on the wrong antidepressant. I’d started taking it about three months earlier because I wanted to give up smoking and this pill was meant to ease the withdrawal symptoms.
Although my mental health takes precedence now, I’m still determined to quit smoking. It just means I’m going to have to exercise even more willpower – easier said than done when most of the other psychiatric patients here are puffing away nonstop.
My psychiatrist prescribes a different antidepressant, which also deals with chronic pain. I suffer from neurofibromatosis – nonmalignant tumours that grow from the nerves, with painful results.
A psychologist is part of the team I see almost daily. We discuss relationships and how to strengthen my bonds with friends to improve my support network.
All the experts keep reminding us that sooner or later we’ll have to face the world out there again and return to regular life.
The other patients come from all walks of life. They include a jeweller, a nurse at a day hospital, a retired auditor, a drama student and a structural engineer.
The engineer’s acute anxiety was triggered by his stressful job. People’s lives are in his hands. The student has issues about her weight and finding her own voice. The auditor is lonely and the jeweller, after being married for 20 years, has become estranged from his wife.
Although I’m in a bad space it occurs to me how privileged I am. My medical aid covers the treatment I’m getting here. From my bed I have a view of Signal Hill.
Fuzzy with medication, my thoughts turn to the psychiatric patients of Life Esidimeni hospital in Gauteng. A lack of government funding caused their care to be outsourced to private entities – with disastrous results.
I visited them as a journalist, courtesy of South African Depression and Anxiety Group (Sadag). I remember people wandering around aimlessly, some of them naked, and without any medication.
The sad upshot was that 134 of the Esidimeni patients died and that the government now has to pay out more than R159 million to their families.
The severe shortage of beds in psychiatric wards in state hospitals persists. According to estimates by the WHO there are five people on the waiting list for each available bed in South Africa.
While I’m recovering I take up knitting again, I make bracelets, and colour in a mandala (a spiritual diagram that represents the cosmos). These activities all help build my confidence that I’m capable of being a productive human being again.
My fellow patients and I discuss with the occupational therapist how we’re going to keep our emotions in check. “Emotions are like children. You don’t want them to drive the car but you also don’t want to lock them in the boot,” is her advice.
I ’ m di s charged 12 days later. The first few days I walk around dragging my feet.
It seems to me that people . . . . well, they look at me as if I’m crazy. But a few days later, back at the office, my colleagues say I look great.
Yes, I was in the right place at the right time. And now I’m also in the right place. I’m still here. And I have hope again.
According to estimates by the WHO there are five people on the waiting list for each available bed in a psychiatric ward in SA
SOURCES: ROSA BREDEKAMP, CAPE TOWN PSYCHOLOGIST; HANNES SWART, CAPE TOWN INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGIST; CASSEY CHAMBERS, OPERATIONAL DIRECTOR OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEPRESSION AND ANXIETY GROUP (SADAG); DR AJESH JANKI, PSYCHIATRIST AT AKESO PSYCHIATRIC CLINIC, UMHLANGA