Have You Had House Guests with Mental Health Problems

For the past week, I have have had a house guest from the UK with mental health problems. He shared a flat once with me as a medical student at Bristol University ages ago. We made contact again through friends reunited and he told me that he wanted to visit me for a few days followed by a trip to China. I knew that he had some mental health problems but the fact that his visa application was refused by China was indicative of a major illness. It turned out that he had schizophrenia and was on quite a lot of medication. He then asked me whether he could stay for a week instead. I was quite worried about this but I do have a spare appartment available that used to be our office. Since I have an autistic daughter, I am deeply aware of the discrimination and stigma that mental health patients face, I told him to go ahead with the trip.

When I met him, I was in deep shock. He has got very fat and his face bloated probably because of the drugs. He was completely dishevelled and had a deep stench of urine. When I bought him to a Chinese restaurant, he used his hands to grab the food from the plate. Anyway, I took him to our spare appartment. We no longer had hot running water in that appartment so he had to use the facilities in the clubhouse attached to our development. I introduced him to my wife and my Indonesian maid and both were shocked. In fact, whenever my wife or maid went up to his appartment, he would appear in his underpants only in front of them. Understandably, both my wife and maid were very scared. There was a now a big stench in our appartment and anybody who smelt it would feel sick.

The next day as he was recovering from jetlag, I did not do anything with him. I was quite frightended myself although I do have experience in handling mental heatlh patients when I was a student and also in my previous workplace. Anyway, I thought that I should do what I could to make his stay a pleasant one. For the next few days, I took him around Hong Kong in my car. It seems that he is quite normal and coherent in the morning but starts acting funny in the evening as his medication wears off. I could also see a lot of side effects of this drugs such as making sudden jerks or noises. He just couldn't stop talking to me all the time and he really disturbed me driving. Once he told me that he vomited all over one of his friend's car! Anyway, I think we manageed to get through this with flying colours and I saw him off yesterday at the airport.

I think one of reaons why he wanted to visit me was that he was feeling rather lonely and wanted to talk to someone. From what I can gather, it seems that after graduation, he only worked as a doctor for a few years before his license was suspended because of mental illness. He had been in hospital a few times, of which one was after he pulled a knife on a woman. His wife left him after a few years and he has a son who is in university now. Luckily, his father had set up a trust fund for him and that is enough to cover his living expenses.

But his whole story is very sad. He went to Westminister school which is one of the top public schools in the UK before entering Cambridge to study engineering. After one year, he decided to drop out and study medicine at Bristol instead. I think this was the major mistake. There was so much pressure at medical school and I think that is what broke him. I barely made it myself. From what he told me, it seems that a lot of my other classmates are having big problems with health and marriage as well, and at least had died from a car accident.

I am feeling rather sad and depressed about this at the moment. Obviously on the one hand, I am glad that we no longer have to take care of him. It is impossible to say whether he posed any physical risk to my family and my maid but he certainly posed a hygienic risk. I really hope that he will get better with time.

I wonder whether any of you have similar experiences?

Derek