I’m well acquainted with all three of these. I have been through the system well over twenty times now, and I continue to draw on that extensive experience. I have been on dozens of medications and have seen four different psychiatrists, three of whom were highly respected professors. I think I’m now at a point where I can talk openly about these three topics, having accumulated a lot of personal experience. As usual, I’m going to share things I probably should keep to myself because they’re quite personal, but this is a blog I’ve wanted to create for years. Most of my hospital admissions have been at Beleura Private in Mornington. After visits to many public psychiatric wards, I wouldn’t put myself through that kind of hell again. My most recent stay was at Frankston Hospital and it was a complete nightmare — I was there for a week but it felt much longer. These places often do more harm than good.
Alongside numerous psychiatric admissions, I also spent two and a half separate stints in rehab at Beleura. I know the hospital well, I know the staff, and in turn the staff know me. I don’t feel like a prisoner when I’m there. I was free to take as much leave as I wished, I had my own room equipped with Foxtel and Wi‑Fi for my laptop, and the food was consistently excellent. I could choose the classes I wanted to attend, and I had regular one‑on‑one sessions with a psychiatrist I’ve been seeing for the last fourteen years. I’ve also been under the care of Professor Burrows, one of the leading psychiatrists in the country; Professor Peter Doherty; and Professor Fitzgerald, who led the development of TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation), which I underwent under his supervision. Over the years I’ve dealt with a wide range of professionals — doctors, case managers, nurses, psychologists — and the list goes on.
My current psychiatrist, whose name I won’t disclose, is a fantastic doctor, though I haven’t seen him in over a year — I’ll explain why later. I’ve spent years in hospitals; a large portion of my life has been lived inside these institutions. Thank God I have private health cover — I don’t mind paying for it at all. The amount of money they’ve spent on my care could easily have bought a house, no kidding.
I saw my first psychologist when I was fifteen. I was put on medication as well. I started young. This happened because my parents could see how miserable I had become, and to help they discovered a note in my wallet that they interpreted as glorifying suicide. In reality, it was lyrics by Kurt Cobain. I despised psychoanalysis then, and decades later my feelings haven’t changed. I want my prescriptions and I want to leave the session as quickly as possible. I never told any of my friends about any of this — it remained my private little secret.
I was first hospitalised at The Melbourne Clinic in Richmond. It was a large hospital, impressive in scale and a little overwhelming. It was also an eye‑opener, with things happening around me every day while I was young and unsure. I think I was about twenty‑two. I was admitted to the ICU ward, which was under very close monitoring. At least there was a designated smoking area. I believe I was sharing the space with maybe five other patients. No shoelaces, no sharp objects, only plastic cutlery; cameras recorded our every move and there was almost always a nurse hovering nearby. I didn’t know any better back then. It was my first visit to a hospital, and the memories are mostly unpleasant.
During this time I was allocated my first psychiatrist. His name was Prof. Burrows. Everyone told me he was an in-demand doctor; he was spoken of as if he were a kind of god. This chap was in his late seventies and was still practising. He spent about thirty seconds with me and handed me a questionnaire filled with some bizarre questions. A lot of it was sexually based, and there were other items that now escape my memory. I remember finding it strange and almost inappropriate. Before I knew it he had gone to see his other roughly 150 patients. He was renowned for very short consultations and for overmedicating, but other doctors told me he never got the diagnosis wrong. He would see me late at night, pop his head through the door and say, “How are you? I’ll increase your meds.” I would then see him for seconds the following morning where, once again, he would say, “Good morning, I’ll see you tonight.” He was getting paid for each of those ‘consultations’ and, I later learned, receiving kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies to prescribe large amounts of medication. I was put on 2,400 mg of Seroquel — 800 mg three times a day. The average dose tends to hover around 300 mg; this dose was unheard of. How could he know I needed such excessive amounts of medication when he barely knew me? He had even appeared on the news programme Today Tonight for his overprescribing. He justified it by saying all of the drug companies gave him the same amount of money, so there was no bias. Mum and Dad thought he was dangerous. Anyway, he died a few years back. My current psychiatrist told me he slipped in the shower and hit his head, and also suggested that red wine might have been a contributing factor.
After leaving ICU and joining the general population I was assigned another professor. I saw him a few times but we never really clicked. He was the doctor who started me on clozapine, and he too worked mostly at the Melbourne Clinic. Clozapine is the last-resort medication prescribed when all other antipsychotics have failed. It was potent, and although I have a fairly high tolerance for drugs, this one knocked me off my feet. It’s not an easy medication to obtain: I had to have a blood test once a month to monitor my white blood cells, get the prescription through a doctor authorized to prescribe it, and collect it from a registered chemist — all of which caused so many headaches. I remained on this difficult medication for fourteen years. I only stopped taking it about a year ago, and since then life has noticeably improved. VISIT PART TWO BY SCROLLING TO THE TOP OF THE ABOVE ENTRY >>