Most of them started living in residence many years ago, more than ten, more or less than twenty. The objective of the project is the empowerment, training and autonomy of the residents. But if it's hard to turn around mental illness, it's even harder in our stigmatizing and exclusionary society. Hard personal biographies, intense suffering, great sensitivity towards them, fragility, most of the times derived from mental illnesses and illnesses. Both the so-called “healthiest normal” and the “most diagnosed official sick”.

“Why did you start living in residence?”, first question. The final factor was an extreme crisis in many cases: “Like most people, I started living here after a crisis”; “I entered in 1998, after being admitted for a psychotic outbreak. It still hurts my head sometimes.” In most cases, prior to these crises they had accumulated many experiences and sufferings. The concrete forms of suffering are diverse: “I have paranoia, that bad things are going to happen to me or they are going to do me – I will not say what – “I hear voices. With the coronavirus, they're not attacking me much." The consumption of drugs has appeared a few times, more than the origin of the disease, as a motor of deepening: “I came to the residence sixteen years ago. She had a mental illness aggravated by the use of toxic substances.”

Some have talked about conflicting coexistence with the family, and the fact that they have started living in residence has helped them to improve these relationships: “I had no good relationship with my parents and I was denounced for the conflicts. The cops arrived and said someone had to leave the house. I spent two months at my brothers’ house and then came to the residence.” Seconds: “I have been in residence for thirteen years, because I have a mental illness. In the house of the parents the situation was very bad, now we take much better in the distance”.

Hard but that can be many biographies: “Adolescence was pretty. I studied, I worked, I was driving, but I had problems with the use of toxic substances, and my mother's suicide was an explosion, and I was already in college, and I didn't want to go ahead. I was in the psychiatric ward, I stole to eat and I was arrested, I was in prison, I wandered through Europe ... I've been in the residence for four or five years. I do my best to be with what my family is.”

Many speak in terms of affection and recognition of the residence and its workers, saying that the place and people have done well (the worker who conducts the interviews, on several occasions, tells them with humor that he does not “fight”. One of the residents who has been talking about diagnosed disease for many years has spoken from the perspective of time: “First there was nothing, neither social services, nor knowledge... We had to start slowly. At the time of Franco, like the ikastola, there was nothing to start. We've done what we can with mental illness and fears and schizophrenia. I’m much better than I was.”

Covid-19 and New Life

Routines are especially important for people with mental illness: schedules, activities, relationships... Those responsible for the residence strive to maintain an active life for the residents. Some have a job, they have occupational workshops, they go out on their own in the street and take walks. The situation has now changed fundamentally. They are also closed to traffic, although it is an apartment of about 30 people, according to the Basque Department of Security. We want to know how the coronavirus crisis and containment have changed their lives.

“It’s taken me a lot of freedom,” one of the residents summed up in a group interview. The current state of residence has been modified: “The activities are shorter, we are more divided into groups, but at the same time we get closer, we speak more... It's bad, but not everything is bad." “Before it made me weird to see the professionals of the residence with masks, now I would find the opposite weird.” “We’re busy at all times. Good weather also helps.” “I thought it would be worse to see how things are out, but here we have it pretty controlled. Many measures have been taken, I believe that among all of us we are doing a good job, educators and us.” “I’ve noticed a bit of fear and tension among the professionals, yes, in general for everyone.”

Beyond the activities and spaces directly linked to the residence, the lives in general have changed the people who live in it. Even though they spend more time talking on the phone, they miss family and friends, or just walk down the street: “I don’t see my mother, I don’t go home from my parents, I miss my brothers and my monitor, Gamarra’s dogs. I once ate a pintxo and read a newspaper.”

 

 

 

 

 

Between fear and tranquility

The situation has created fear for most residents in one way or another. Fear of contaminating oneself or loved ones, for example: “I’m a little afraid of infection, sometimes I’m heavy with my peers, but I’m also forgotten from time to time.” Loss of employment and fear of the social situation in general: “Going out into the street and all closed, without people, and you say, when will this end?” “At first, bad. The empty streets, because it is the biggest contact with the mother, the distances...”. “Fear of losing work, fear of sickening family members. In the company we are in temporary regulation.” In any case, the experiences cannot be generalized: “Some carry it very well, others bad, I am among them.”

One of the patients presented symptoms that could be those of COVID-19 and was confined in a single room, inside the residence, as a preventive measure: “It has become long and hard, turning in my head and thinking, yes, quite hard. At first also the scare, when the doctor told me it could be coronavirus.”

In his words, there is an evolution. The initial fears and anxieties about breaking the routines have calmed down over time. They have been adapting to the new situation, making a personal and collective effort: “I spent a lot of time on the street and doing activities. I'm learning how to organize myself differently and to occupy time. I'm very well with him, I'm surprised, man takes strength from wherever he is." “The first days of changing routines were difficult, as we know that when the new ones are implanted, this will have an end.” “I’m doing it quite well, we have a patio, activities, you can talk to people smoking a cigarette or having coffee. People are responding well, I have not seen anger or conflict...” “We’re helping to get the best we can.” Time has helped to adapt to the changes, yes, but the lengthening of the confinement, at the same time, makes the situation increasingly unbearable, as the ailments accumulate.

Consumption of tobacco, coffee or industrial sweets is common among users of the residence. Tobacco and coffee consumption has increased with increased anxiety: “It is noticeable that there is more anxiety about tobacco.” Sweets are not available inside the residence. A couple of changes point to humor: “I’m slimming. Not like pintxo, I don’t buy bollos...”. “Not like industrial pastries, the pills fatten us, but I’m slimming with the lockdown.”

They've made a lot of allusions to those who are worse than them, with empathy. They express concern and, at the same time, help them to relativize their suffering or difficulties: “The hard thing is for everyone, and we have to eat, we can watch television, we have activities and games, they take good care of us...” “It’s going to be very bad going on for a lot of people outside. Beggars, low defenses... here we are of motherfucker, so clear.” “This has brought us all together a lot, it has been shown that we are part of a chain. Health professionals heal people, we do our work by staying at home”. “The family is fine, my mother was taking chemotherapy and has not received the coronavirus, those things have reassured me.”

Psychiatric confinement; pandemic confinement

Many of the people with severe mental illness have long stays in psychiatric units, sometimes in very difficult conditions: non-voluntary hospitalizations, without the possibility of leaving, even tied occasionally, very medicated, with extreme manifestations of the disease: hallucinations, voices, self-destructive desires...

The current lockdown brings its exerts. To some, for evil: “Containment reminds me of hospital admissions and at some times it’s wrong.” “I have been admitted three times in my life. Now I haven’t done well.” Others say that what they experience then serves them to cope with the current crisis: “As I have been hospitalized several times, I am in better lockdown: it makes me more bearable, calmer, I can shut up at some moments…” “Most of us have suffered long psychiatric incomes. That helps us now to cope with certain situations: seeing people wearing masks, not being able to leave, being isolated from people... Because people are without freedom, and we have lived that.” “Many of us have been through here a lot of calamities, we have been locked up for a long time, even in harder situations, and we are able to carry the lockdown.”

What can they teach us?

Fear, isolation, many harsh contexts of coexistence, economic, social, ecological and political uncertainty. This time it is not the reality of the “mentally ill”, but that of the majority of the population. It is expected that anxiety, emotional imbalances, psychological suffering, schizophrenia, psychosis or neurosis have increased during these weeks in society and will continue to increase beyond confinement and the emergency situation. With these feelings, situations and suffering, people who have lived in the Hogar Alavés residence live together for years. What can you teach us about your experience? What things or strategies are useful to them? “No pills, right?” said one in the group, in which everyone has laughed.

Some have stressed the importance of pronouncing suffering and talking to someone: “Everyone lives it in one way, but the first thing is to talk to someone. Be aware of what is happening.” “I live anxiously. Just talking helps a lot, for me it’s a relief.” These are people in general, but it is also recommended to go to “a professional” when necessary.

They consider it very important to identify which of the sufferings and fears they feel are real and which are not so much, or what is below them: “I take a page to write in the face of fear, and so I realize what is below that fear. Or, I accept what I am living and I will slowly turn around.” “I have paranoia. To reassure me, I try to differentiate what is invented, what is true and what I am wrong”.

Many times we advance what may come by representing the toughest options. The recommendation to avoid this is reiterated: “Don’t be hypochondriac, don’t go ahead with distressing events that have not yet happened, relax a little while watching a movie, reading. One of the great dangers in this situation is paranoia, paranoia is the consequence of fear”. “If it is because of what the distress is going to happen (loss of employment, hospitalization of the grandmother, illness of the family member doctor...) do not advance”.

In these weeks of waves of news about the coronavirus, the lack of attention to television and information at all times helps limit anxiety and fears. Some propose activities that reassure us and enjoy us. Listening to music, reading, talking to friends and family, physical exercises, or tai chi helps them, for example. Others have responded from the collective dimension: “You have to be understanding and generous because there is so much suffering. We have all gone to the beginning more fear and we have moved forward: to breathe, to relax and to move forward.” “Doing things that make you feel good and help the other.” Another has highlighted optimism: “My strategy is to wake up every day and tell myself when lifting the shutter: one day less. Sport helps me a lot, I am glad to see the people of the residence every morning.”

All of this and celebrate it together at the end of the lockdown. Large: “When it’s over, let us all be taken to a quincy. We would all be grateful for a good chuleta.” Or in small: “I would settle for a couple of eggs with chips and a sweet potato.” Aware that what we are experiencing will not end the disappearance of the confinement or the state of emergency: “It will make us weird to find ourselves in the street and ‘ai, the distance’.” “I imagine that all the measures from one day to the next will not end, which we will have to adapt to.”