Mental health: ethnic minority carers’ experiences

I just hope that, as I said, the hospital authorities will understand also where people are coming from, their culture, background and why, and what is mental illness for them, because at times when I see people, I ask them that question, what is mental illness for you? Because you have to understand where they are coming from before you'll be able to know why they are behaving the way they are behaving, and I think people at times don't find out a bit more of people's background and who they are and why they are worried or frightened and help in the way that they should. And medication also has so many side effects, people don't want to take medication, do they have alternative help? That also is something that I think'

How do you define mental illness?

How do I define mental illness? In my own words, I would just say it's' -a way of thinking outside your reality, really, and not able to meet your basic requirements at a point that you're in some form of crisis. So if the crisis is sorted and you'll maybe get better and at times you need some medication to help you do that. So it's not the end of the world, you know, I mean it doesn't often kill like so many other physical illnesses kill, but it can make life difficult, so you need to deal with it.
 

I think after, maybe after all these experiences that he had in his childhood, whether it was beating or being, as a baby not getting the right love and attention when he needed it. He probably was a very vulnerable child and didn't know how to cope with life in different ways, you know. And so I think, well what, -he was OK as far as I know, when we were together as a family up to the age of 16,17 although he might have his weird ways of being, you know, shy and isolated and all that. And not, -he had one or two places where he went, like a corner shop where he had made friends, -but I can't recall him having very many friends maybe, but I was lost in my own world. But then he came abroad, back to England. And I think that was the, -must have been a terrible shock because he came, he was sheltered so much with parents and the family, and then suddenly to come to a life which was completely different. And although my brother was here, another brother, eldest brother, and he was coming to join him, very soon he had to find his own accommodation. And I think it must have been a tremendous shock around 18 or at whatever age he came, to be away from his parents who always kind of mollycoddled him, to a life where he was very foreign, different. It's different language, different culture, different food, not the same faces, no friends. A brother and his sister in law, quite changed because they had been here longer, they would have probably assimilated more in the culture so, thinking changes because I know my thinking has changed so, -and [you know] the life makes it change because you work tremendously hard, nine to five, so you can't stand nonsense really. And this young person coming along and so, maybe wanting care or not, it's little things which we don't know when you come from a foreign land where you're not used to the ways of saying thank you or sorry or knowing the other side of life, of working life and the stresses, and expecting things maybe. Living in bedsits.

At the beginning I thought [husband] was just stressed because of the pressure at work. He didn't have a good employer who was a bully. And Jim was a very determined, also he wasn't giving up to get better salary. Although [husband] was working as an IT developer, and he was getting reasonable salary at the time, -very hard, I hardly ever seen him at home. He as always away, almost like living together but I only see him at the weekends for a few hours, if he's at home he was always sleeping. So I thought, try to get the better life created a lot of stress for him and the pressure. I thought that was the reasons for him to have the depression. But when [husband] was beginning to tell me history about himself, since he was little, I didn't realise he was actually from dysfunctional family. His mum, -he's got problems with his mum and dad, and the grandparents, and all over family backgrounds, his upbringing, bullied at school, racial issues, harassment, those, -everything I think created a long history of his mental health problems. So when I, -so [husband] had the nervous breakdown, that was a very, very superficial things, really tip of iceberg. But actually there was a massive, massive discovery since then. So it wasn't just stress at the work, actually [husband] had reasons to feel depressed and traumatised by his experience in the past. But those things aren't talked through by GP or psychiatrist at early stage. Now, just these days it beginning to happen, but especially his psychiatrist was very reluctant to help or treat [husband]. So the causes were sort of like, “oh, it's [husband's] upbringing”, well so what? Kind of like, “oh, everybody's children in this country can have that kind of a problems, single parent is such a popular issues, nothing unusual, it's common problems so.