Paul’s Story: A Son’s Struggle with Adoption, Schizophrenia and the Mental Health System

By Mardie Townsend

“Mental illness? Who wants to read about that?” Despite one in four people experiencing mental ill health in their lifetime, it is not a popular topic for conversation.  Perhaps this book will change that!

Combining amusing anecdotes, insights from research and heart-rending personal reflections, this book recounts the triumphs, traumas, and tragedies of the life of Paul – adopted child, loved son and brother, schizophrenia sufferer – and of his family. Excerpts from Paul’s own journals and reflections from his family, highlight the ups and downs of Paul’s life. These include his struggle with having been relinquished for adoption, his difficulty accepting the diagnosis of schizophrenia, and the inconsistent and patchwork approach to support for people with mental ill health and underline the tragic waste of human possibility resulting from inadequate mental health care.

An absorbing, poignant and powerful read, this chronicling of Paul’s life and experiences and its impact on his family is incredibly emotive, tackling some difficult subjects with honesty, compassion, and humour. The personable writing style makes this work accessible to a wide audience and the sustained analysis and discussion relating to the need for a higher standard of care and improvements in the mental health system makes the work compelling. Ultimately, it is a heartfelt piece that raises important suggestions for society today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398487895

Mardie Townsend

Mardie Townsend is a retired academic, wife, mother of three and grandmother of five, co-owner of two Beagles, an active community member and a passionate advocate of both environmental and social justice. For the past 25 years, Mardie has researched and taught in health promotion/public health at Deakin University, leading a program of research exploring the human health/environment interface, focusing particularly on contact with nature as a source of health promotion and healing. Her ‘Healthy Parks, Healthy People’ research is widely recognised internationally, with Mardie presenting at conferences around the world on nature as ‘medicine for body and mind’.

Book preview

About the Author

Mardie Townsend is a retired academic, wife, mother of three and grandmother of five, co-owner of two Beagles, an active community member and a passionate advocate of both environmental and social justice.

For the past 25 years, Mardie has researched and taught in health promotion/public health at Deakin University, leading a program of research exploring the human health/environment interface, focusing particularly on contact with nature as a source of health promotion and healing.

Her ‘Healthy Parks, Healthy People’ research is widely recognised internationally, with Mardie presenting at conferences around the world on nature as ‘medicine for body and mind’.

Dedication

When we adopted Paul, I remember saying to my parents Paul is just as much your grandchild as our other children. And that’s the way it has always been in our family – each of us has been loved and accepted for who we are and encouraged to live out our potential. Without that love and support, especially from my husband Ron and our children Ruth and Joel and their partners, this book would never have been written and certainly never published.

To those who have read drafts of the book (immediate and extended family members and our friend Robyn Hansen): thank you for your insightful comments and encouragement. They have helped me to sharpen the focus of the book and resulted in a more compelling work.

To the team at Austin Macauley Publishers: thank you for placing your faith in me and for all your help in bringing this book to publication. And finally, to my brother, Tony, and his late wife, June—who recently lost her struggle with terminal cancer: thank you for all your love and support over the years, including the help with clearing out Paul’s flat after his death, but particularly for your role in ensuring the book reached publication.For all who experience mental ill health and for their families and carers. And for our family who loved and supported Paul but, in the end, could not save him.

Copyright Information ©

Mardie Townsend 2023

The right of Mardie Townsend to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398487888 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398487895 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

For the right to use ‘Come as you are’: Deirdre Browne IBVM, OAM. Used with permission of Spectrum Publications Pty Ltd., Richmond Vic 3121, Australia.

Preface

In 2018, I began writing the story of our son, Paul, who died in 2016 of an accidental drug overdose two weeks after having been discharged from a psychiatric unit, with minimal support, after seven months as an in-patient.

I felt that I needed to tell his story for several reasons: first, to counteract the very ‘black and white’ images portrayed in the media about people with serious mental illness and present a more nuanced understanding of the lives of such people and those who love them; and second, to draw attention to the shortcomings of the existing mental health care system, in the hope of preventing other people suffering the same outcome.

However, it became patently clear to me that Paul’s story cannot be adequately told without also telling (at least in part) the story of this family. For Paul’s life was (and remains) intertwined with the personalities and experiences of our family, in both positive and negative ways. And so, this is also, in part, a biography of our family.

But my writing had stalled. By late 2019, the need to return to my writing had been bubbling away within me for several months. One of the key factors in this was that, in October 2019, our local church took part in the Garage Sale Trail—a co-ordinated ‘event’ of over 18,000 garage sales across Australia.

For our church, it was a chance to raise some funds to sustain ministry in our community and to dispose of unwanted goods ahead of the planned demolition of some of our ageing buildings. For us personally, it was a chance to dispose of long forgotten and/or no longer needed goods which we had stored in our roof space.

But what came out of the roof was much more than I had anticipated. Yes, there was a lot of ‘junk’, as well as some goods which others would find valuable but which we no longer needed. But amongst it all were several boxes of papers and other items that had been placed there after Paul’s death—at a time when we were not ready or able to deal with them.

And amongst these, we discovered journals, letters and various other writings by Paul which, I quickly realised, offered the chance for me to include Paul’s voice (indeed Paul’s voices) in this book.

I hope that this book will offer you, the reader, an insight into the reality of the challenges facing people experiencing intractable schizophrenia and their families; but I hope it will also demonstrate that, while those challenges are very real and inherently complex, despite all the difficulties, there are positives to be found; successes (even if somewhat inconsistent) to be celebrated and loving relationships to be shared.

Mardie Townsend

June 2021

Chapter 1

Gone!

He’s gone! Hard words to comprehend and hard words to accept.

It was 1 July 2016. My husband and I were in Lund, Sweden, where I had been presenting at a conference. Our daughter, Ruth, had rung us the night before to find out where we kept the spare key to our younger son, Paul’s, flat. She had been trying to contact Paul for several days, without success.

Finally, accompanied by police, Ruth went to Paul’s flat where he was found—sitting peacefully on his couch, drug injecting equipment on the table beside him, but clearly freed from his struggle with life.

Our good friends, Maria and Bengt, with whom we had been staying, were driving us to the railway station to catch a train to Copenhagen to fly on to Budapest to visit our older son, Joel, and his family, when my phone rang. It was Ruth, our daughter, telling us that Paul was ‘gone’.

Gone? We immediately thought he had taken off in his car to travel interstate, something he had done several times before to escape the mental health system. Where’s he gone this time? I asked.

No, he’s gone, said Ruth.

I had heard people say: You should never have to bury your children, and now I knew what they meant. My initial reaction to Paul’s death was shock; shock because, although we had long feared something like this would happen, we had always pushed it to the back of our minds.

Our most recent interactions with him had been very positive and it had seemed as though his recent lengthy hospital stay had stabilised his mental health.

After a short time, shock gave way to feelings of anger; anger that the transitional accommodation we’d been told he needed had not been available to Paul; and anger that the level of care provided to Paul through the community mental health system was so inadequate.

By a stroke of good fortune that morning, the train was late—rare for Swedish trains. This gave us time to make some essential phone calls. As my husband and I stood on Lund station making telephone calls to various family members in Australia, I felt as though I was operating on ‘auto-pilot’.

I guess that I should have been more prepared for this. We had often read of people with mental illness dying from drug overdoses, suicide or in police shootings; but perhaps it is human nature to think that that is what happens to other people, not to us.

I struggled with the notion that Paul, who had come to us (by adoption) as a beautiful, snowy blonde, blue eyed six-month old baby and who had been part of our lives for almost thirty-seven years, was gone.

With him were gone all the hopes and dreams we had held for him; as a potential elite sportsman; as a likely outdoor activities co-ordinator; as the uncle who would teach his nieces and nephews to ski; even the dreams which had emerged in his later, troubled years, that he might find some peace and joy in his art.

If I’m honest, I suspect there was an element of guilt that this had happened—a questioning, focussing on what we could have done differently (either way back in his childhood or in later years) that might have prevented this from happening.

In the state of numbness which followed our initial shock and anger, we continued with our journey to Budapest. Joel (our older son) had taken long service leave to accompany his wife, Nic, to Budapest and care for their children, while Nic was based there during a short-term secondment.

It was wonderful to spend the weekend with Joel’s family in Budapest, to see two of our beautiful grandsons (Oscar and Hamish), and to have the opportunity to reminisce about Paul, as well as plan his funeral and support one another in our grief.

To some degree, the weekend was lived through a fog, in which we as a family went through the motions of everyday living, but also engaged in planning a funeral service via Skype calls between Budapest and Melbourne with Ruth, who was liaising with our local minister. And alongside all the other emotions we were experiencing, there was the stress of re-organising our travel arrangements to get home as soon as possible.

The trip home entailed catching a train from Budapest to Vienna, a journey of almost 4 hours; a train from Vienna Central Station to Vienna Airport; a flight from Vienna to Dubai; and a connecting flight from Dubai to Melbourne. Given the context in which we were travelling, it’s not surprising that the journey was stressful.

But there was one positive experience in it all. When we checked in at Vienna airport, we explained to the airline staff the reason for our last-minute booking. The caring attitude of the desk staff, in ensuring that we were given a four-seat section in the centre of the plane to ourselves, so that no-one else would be bothering us during the flight, was topped off by the cabin crew.

As soon as we boarded, a young female member of the cabin crew approached us to express her sympathy and to ask if there was anything she could do to help us. Several times throughout the flight, she squatted down beside our seats to check if we were ok. We really appreciated her compassion.

Sadly, the airline on which we travelled from Dubai to Melbourne did not display any such compassion, either in terms of seating or in-cabin care.

Ruth met us at Melbourne airport. I’m sure those around us must have wondered at the free-flowing tears we all shed as we hugged each other. We had all endured an emotional roller-coaster over the previous few days. We were exhausted, not only because of the stress of what had happened, but also from our trip home.

Ruth was exhausted from the emotional strain of having to identify Paul’s body for the police, spending hours being interviewed by a police officer (fortunately a very compassionate one) who was undertaking an investigation into Paul’s sudden death; being the only member of the family in Melbourne and having to deal with all that needed to be done as a result of Paul’s sudden death. All at the same time as being a health professional, a wife and a mother to three young children.

Immediately after our visit to Budapest, Joel had planned to take the boys on a 2 or 3-day trip to Israel to visit his school friend, Jason, who lives in