Let’s defeat      stigma

 

by Levan Tsalugelashvili

We call them loonies, but we still put it mildly. They celebrated Christmas and the New Year in the same manner, as we did… Probably, then they named lodgers of the mental hospital to be insane. May be, they did not mention them at all! The wheel of fortune whirled and their world abruptly diminished! For example, one of them did not have anybody, who would calm her down… (We should take it into consideration, that there has always been such a “one”, there was, there is, and there will be)… It seemed to her that all and everything was against her, that there was a plot against her! Though it did not seem like that… It was so in reality… Was it? The truth and a lie swarmed in her head like ants and objects lost their color. She did not know any more what was real, what was not, what was fictitious, what was wished, what was magnified… The world gradually diminished… First she was not let outside, then she decided to jump out from the window because of it … When she was taken into the ambulance, she could hardly breathe! She wanted space, she aspired to freedom! But everything was over in the cold walls of the hospital.

What? The first injunction was painful, but the usual for her hysterics was over … She did not like the first meal at the hospital, but afterwards she did not refuse it… Fastidiousness, which was a daily thing at a look of a meal with onion, was over. She liked to read and play piano… She does not read any more, she does not play known melodies on the ragged pushbuttons of the piano in the corridor, before native faces appear at sounds of known music.

One face orders her to stop playing! The second one reprimands her, the third one looks at her delighted and this anxiety proceeds before the faces fall asleep in her tired memory. The day is over, but the only thing is not over, childhood… Time takes her to childhood, and her closest friend is a one-eyed doll, presented by a doctor. Once she beat it almost in the same manner, as she had been beaten by her mother in the childhood, and afterwards, the doll did not open one of its eyes.

***

We have read a small fragment from an unlucky life of one of my coevals, the wholeness of shots of which became a sad film then … Though, what a film can give, if we watch it, we like it, applause, raise a glass of cognac or champagne at the presentation, deafen the director with calls “Bravo”, insert our hands into the pockets and go to our hearths. The only moral or justification, which this film or at least a publication can have, is to make us not only think about the fortune of insane people, but also make these thoughts encourage us to do anything good. “We have visited the mental hospital Asatiani with Christmas presents”, this is how we could have begun our letter and, probably, you would not read the rest of it any more. Actually, we, the representatives of the Caucasian Center of Education and Culture after Mary Becker Eddy, (an American writer and journalist) together with the firm “Ekba Professional” congratulated patients of the female department with the coming Christmas and the New Year. But it was neither charity, nor a garish action… We wished to share our human warmth and love with them, which they deserve not only from us, but from you as well. First it was difficult for me to communicate with them, before one of the patients told me, “Formerly it also seemed to me, that those, who are here, are too dangerous… When I got ill and I was brought here, I thought the same, but now all of us do our best here to help each other”…

Yes, gentlemen, the world has diminished for them so that it became to look like an eyelet, as only an eyelet does not have bars.

- My God, it is such happiness, such a great cake! These three roses are the symbols of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit –Tiko, being 29-years old, repeated these words for several times… She always gives a religious tint to her conversation. “The God will forgive me for smoking, you know why? I am insane and the God will forgive me… He will forgive me for that I loved one boy and then my life was confused and I got in here… I was a very beautiful girl… I am beautiful now, but I am not given a pincers to correct my eyebrows… I am said that somebody can take this pincers away from me and hurt me… But they can not take away my hair… Look, what beautiful hair I have (she loosens her hair and turns her back to me)… Let’s go, I’ll show you something… There is a consulting room here, and here and here… This is my room, my bed… I should show you my bed, but sorry, it is disordered… When you come here again, I will show the photo of my grandfather, he was an old Karachogeli (note: a representative of the city working-people elite, associated with the concept of a knight)… I am a sister and you are a brother… Yes? Nobody blesses with a coca-cola, but I should bless you and drink for your health… Let’s drink for the health of all of us, the health of the whole department, Madona, Ketino, the health of our doctors and I pray to the God for our happiness…”

She drank a lot of “toasts”, and many toasts remained undrunk… The main was that they were happy, they were pleased, and they tried to show their warmth. Whether it is not warmth, when an ill person gives you a tangerine, which she has personally peeled? It was the day, when the verge between “us” and “them” became less apparent. Then we did our best to make them feel the same way as we did, think that they did not differ from us, but the one, at whom everybody was laughing and whom nobody needed! Azerbaijani Tamila Alieva sang “Tbiliso” perfectly, read poems of Galaktion, Titsian, etc….

Finally we made a photo for memory, where, nevertheless, it is difficult to distinguish patients from healthy people. Illness reminded about itself when the time to take medicines and make injunctions approached… Leaving them I was thinking that by all means I would get interested in the program, which was realized in the world for prevention of mental diseases. I have found information in the Internet, where it is written that in America economical need, unemployment and death of relatives is the three main risk-groups of people, who potentially can become victims of mental diseases. I am even afraid to think about the results, which we may in case of Georgia, if we bring the American formula of origination of mental diseases to the state of the Georgian population. It ensues that 80% of our population is potentially ill. If it is so, about what defeat of stigma we are talking about. Whether a potential patient can sympathize with a patient and not to laugh at him? Probably, it is possible and we should manage to do it, as patients are not pitiful for the God, we are more pitiful, when we can not feel keenly the pain of a friend and his fortune is often funny for us! Some time lodgers of the mental hospital thought the same about others and some time they, celebrated the Christmas and the New Year in their homes the same as we do … Not only a person, but the society as well gathers in the harvest after sowing.

Newspaper “Version”; 2007;

on the foto: Tamila alieva and her piano.