McAuley House Stories

Jennifer's* Story      

When Jennifer stood up to receive her gifts, quiet swelled across the filled tables and those standing in the doorway. The bright red butterfly that adorned her hair bobbed as she spoke, sparkling in the light. “Thank you so much. It’s been almost a year since I came here,” she began. She continued with a catch in her voice that it hadn’t been easy, but she’d made a lot of friends and appreciated their support – and the presents. She smiled disarmingly throughout the applause, and shyly as her peers lauded her: she was well liked, fun, and had contributed to the Community since her arrival.

It was birthday night at McAukey House in North Melbourne, celebrated once a month. Inclusively it encouraged all residents and past residents to participate. It was a time of commemoration not only of the passing of another year, but of the achievements made within it.

Jennifer entered the Community in December 2006 after being referred by the psychiatric unit at Royal Melbourne Hospital. One evening Jennifer had arrived on her brother’s doorstep, asking to stay. She had nowhere else to go. Her brother, like her parents, had been at their wits’ end with what to do. Since Jennifer left the family home aged eighteen, they had witnessed her gradual decline into drug-induced paranoia, amotivation and seclusion that may have exacerbated an underlying mental illness. Feeling it was beyond them to help, they turned to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. There Jennifer was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Jennifer is gently-spoken. She considers her words before she speaks, often witty but always worldly-wise. She recalls growing up essentially alone with her continually arguing parents. Her two brothers were a decade older than her and weren’t always around to support her. Her mother, who had been diagnosed with breast cancer just after Jennifer’s birth, was paranoid, particularly about her husband’s whereabouts. There was very little affection in the home. It was an unhappy time.

When Jennifer was ten years old, her mother died. It had been a protracted, hospital-based death, after which Jennifer “went into shock.” She didn’t miss her mother until she was older, when she mourned what could have been and missing “the transition from being a mum to being a friend.”

 Her father re-married some years later. It was hard for Jennifer to accept that he and his new wife got on so well. One day, she saw her step-mother taking down pictures of her mother. She remembers thinking, “What? Where’s the home gone?”

Jennifer rebelled. While her family had always considered her fairly uncommunicative and thankless, she became even more so, abusing their efforts. Although Jennifer could see their frustration, she didn’t seem to be able to do anything to change her behaviour. “I wasn’t a confident teenager,” she says. “I didn’t have very high self-esteem, but I made good friends at high school.” She changed schools twice in primary school and thrice during high school. “Maybe all this moving around contributed... through instability,” she considers. She enjoyed school, particularly music and sports; the encouragement of a sports teacher has remained with her, contributing to her current interest in becoming a fitness instructor.

After finishing high school, Jennifer had had “enough of school” and went into full-time work at KFC where she enjoyed the atmosphere. Shortly afterwards, she moved in with a friend, got her driver’s licence and bought a car. “I loved the high life,” she says. She roller-skated, camped and clubbed, looking forward to her free time. “I could do whatever I wanted, be whatever I wanted. My time out, my fun.”

Wanting a change, she left KFC after eighteen months to work in horticulture. She liked working outdoors and the work made her feel good about herself. She was placed into training courses, mastered a four-wheeled drive and studied plant life.  Jennifer drank alcohol only on weekends with friends, but the occasional cannabis use became more regular. Over three years, she became dependent on it and with it, became apathetic. She went into work “feeling good, but I would wonder what I was doing, if it was the right thing.”

She started sleeping in, and autumn turned to winter – “all the more reason not to get out of bed.” Eventually, she stopped going to work and turned her phone off. She felt guilty about work; her manager left messages with her father wanting an explanation, and for Jennifer to know they would welcome her back any time, as KFC had. She continued smoking cannabis until she “didn’t wake up.”

 The more Jennifer smoked, the more she felt her problems would go away. She describes her problems as “just coping with day-to-day life: rent, keeping the car on the road, putting food in the cupboards, buying drugs and alcohol. Smoking was the easy way out.” She would smoke after dinner, wake in the night to smoke more, and would wake stoned by morning. “My body clock was out of whack,” she says.

As the years passed, her stable friendship group fragmented. However, Jennifer maintained a relatively secure relationship with her partner, with whom she lived. She embarked on a series of casual factory-line and gardening jobs. It was hard to know what to expect from the new jobs. She didn’t commit to anything she didn’t like. If she’d had a bad day, she went home to smoke. Although she wondered about using “chemical drugs,” her partner ensured they weren’t available to her.

Jennifer moved to the Mornington Peninsula to be closer to her parents after she split with her partner. It was a time of emotional upheaval. “I had memories of him in my head,” she remembers. “I dreamed of what could have been.” Her parents knew she was using drugs and although they didn’t encourage her to stay under their roof, they eventually bought her the caravan she was living in. “They didn’t really know what to do with me,” she says. Her brothers were interstate and overseas at the time. She went on Centrelink benefits and continued living alone, smoking. “I was never really paranoid, but in the caravan park I became so paranoid I didn’t want to leave the caravan park to use the toilet block.”

She became friendly with others in the caravan park including a young mother and an older man, “a father figure,” with whom she cooked and talked. She also met a man on her first weekend in the caravan park who, that weekend, held up the local Chinese to get money for his next fix. While he was in jail for two and a half years, Jennifer kept up correspondence with him. “Being with him gave me confidence,” she says. She found work for a couple of days a week as a cleaner and took on a hospitality job that led her to work as a kitchen hand in Tasmania for eighteen months. It was a good experience, and her parents encouraged her to stay there because she was doing really well.

She returned to the caravan park, however, anticipating her friend’s release from prison. She stuck up for him, although her parents thought she was mad. Angry that nobody supported their relationship, she started smashing up the caravan. She moved in with her partner, but the relationship didn’t last long. Again, alone and stressed, returned to smoking cannabis.

“I had a warped idea that no-one would let me work full-time if I didn’t get out of the caravan park and have a normal local address,” Jennifer says. She found a room in a house with a mother and son as landlords. The son became her partner for nearly two years. When they broke up, Jennifer sought out someone who she felt could help her. That was when she went to her brother and asked to move in. After years of her abuse towards her family, and feeling her attitude to life, self, and standard of living was below normal, her brother told her he would take her to hospital for help.

Jennifer spent three months at Royal Melbourne Hospital, feeling as though she didn’t need to be there. She was cared for with three regular meals a day, but didn’t fully understand what was going on. “I’m still in the dark about my diagnosis,” Jennifer says. “People with schizophrenia have hallucinations and stuff, but I never did. The doctors didn’t really explain what it meant and why it happened.” She also described bad side effects and a “cloudy mind” from the medication administered. “It took a lot of nagging to get them to change it.” The caseworkers and support workers were helpful and interactive, “but you learned more from the other patients. You didn’t feel alone.” Jennifer became an outpatient and from the half-way house was transferred to Regina Coeli Community. She still keeps in touch with two of the patients and feels she can go back to the caseworkers and “say g’day.”

At Regina Coeli, Jennifer felt “a bit far out in this big old house. You even have to raise your washing using pulleys,” she laughs. “It became common knowledge about respecting others and you had to learn the house rules. It’s been an experience getting to know the other residents and the reasons why they’ve been living here for such a long time. It can be a good thing to have company sometimes. There’s nothing worse than being all by myself.”

Jennifer keeps her weekly meetings with the Community case workers, as well as the monthly psychiatry out-patients sessions. Stable and content for now, she involves herself in the Community chores and activities from daytrips to singing, which she finds therapeutic. Although her relationship with her family is still distant and her brothers both have families of their own, Jennifer feels more able to be affectionate towards them and looking back, wishes she’d taken advantage of their help. She can see now how her behaviour affects others and is more deliberate about her actions.

Jennifer remains positive about the future. “I feel more confident and strong,” she says with a smile. “I know that if a problem comes up, instead of ignoring it until it gets worse, I have to face it.” She is determined she won’t take the easy way out by using drugs again. “I know I’ve changed since leaving home, and my time here at Regina is a bit memorial. I was brought up a Catholic, and so is this place.” It’s made her think about how she was a child and how far she has come since then.

Jennifer is still pursuing her interest in becoming a fitness instructor, she contemplates she could use the new skill to put something back into the Community down the track. She feels she has benefited from the Community’s support and is ready to move on, but will return for birthday nights to keep part of the Community. Judging from the words of her fellow residents, Jennifer will be missed. Aged twenty-seven, articulate, happier and more insightful, Jennifer is like the beautiful butterfly dancing in her hair, poised for flight; as she says, “ready to tackle to world outside.”

Interviewee Jennifer Riley from Regina Coeli Community

Author Melinda Soos, University of Melbourne

First Published Parity Magazine September 2007

Amelia's* Story

 “My maternal grandmother, Mabel, was a twin. Her twin Ruth, spent her whole adult life in what were called lunatic asylums in New Zealand.

 Mabel married and had the first 3 of her 10 children in New Zealand before migrating to Australia. Only one of those children had a psychiatric illness. Mabel herself had her first psychiatric breakdown at menopause and a dementing illness into old age.

 On my father’s side of the family, there was one cousin, Tony, who was a chronic schizophrenic from his youth.

 My parents were missionary teachers for the Salvation Army in Zimbabwe where I was born. When I was three, my father was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and when I was 4 and a half he set sail for Australia. We took 3 ships – one up the East Coast of Africa – with English speaking crew – one from India to Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) and one from there via Fremantle to Melbourne.

 My father’s illness caused chronic depression in all of our family, and we children became excellent academically to compensate.

 I was coping quite well until, in my final year of school, my boyfriend Terry was diagnosed with leukaemia.

 I suffered depression and put on 3 stone in weight. Terry had always wanted to study medicine so I studied it partly for his sake. I did science and medical degrees with first class honours in the latter.

 I had married at 19 and had my babies at 23 and 25. My former husband was very hardworking and married his second wife one month after our divorce. He had fallen in love with her at work.

 ‘I spent 30 years as a doctor and medical scientist.’

 In 1987 I noticed the first symptoms of a psychotic illness. I began becoming disorganised and muddleheaded.

When my children left school to go to university, I left Parkville and went to the south coast of NSW, Bateman’s Bay – to help my mother with my father. My father often fell out of his wheelchair and my mother and I would help him back in.

When Dad’s illness meant that he needed a bigger hospital than the one in Bateman’s Bay, he moved to Canberra and shared a large house with my brother David.

My father died in 1999 and my mother and I moved to a Salvation Army Retirement village in Malvern in June 2000. More recently that village closed for renovations and we moved to a sister village in Blackburn, both villages having been sold by the Salvation Army to a private Brisbane based firm which soon sold on to another firm.

This year I added the diagnosis of ‘cerebral atrophy’, i.e. brain shrinkage – to the previous diagnosis of chronic schizoaffective disorder with superimposed psychotic episodes. However, I am quite stable in a protected environment thanks to the Webster pack. I take 10mg clozapine daily.

Recently my mother moved to Canberra to live with my brother David.

I had been ill for some months in hospital this year, I had an ACAT assessment there. The assessor agreed that my health was better when I was not trying to take care of my mother and suggested my current address.

My most senior position was as Editor to the Monash Medical Graduates newsletter, and my most senior qualification was Part One of the Diploma of Psychological Medicine at Melbourne University.

My older son graduated in Arts at Melbourne University and went into Human Resource Management. He now manages a huge staff looking after intellectually challenged adults in Chadstone. His fiancé has degrees in Computer Science and Accounting. She communicates by sign language, being profoundly deaf, and works for the Taxation Office.

My younger son has a Masters Degree in Psychology and an Arts Degree both from Melbourne University. He works for Austin Health, helping Vietnam Vets who have post traumatic stress disorder. His partner is an Occupational Therapist who supervises Case Managers in Box Hill Mental Health.

They have my first grandchild, Alex, a lovely girl of 11 weeks old.”

*Names have been changed.