You Never Met My Father Read Free Page B

doctor, he slapped his head hard, as if to frighten the voices away.
    The psychiatrist considered these symptoms of early schizophrenia and strongly recommended Denny’s immediate admission to Millbrook Rise Psychopathic Hospital.
    Millbrook Rise was in New Norfolk, outside Hobart on the moody River Derwent. Set up with funds from the Tasmanian Veterans Trust after the First World War, it gave priority admission to servicemen and their families. Denny stayed there for a week. His official diagnosis came in one word: hysteria . But the hospital disturbed him, and he soon convinced his medical officer that he felt well and wanted to return home. He said he was confident about himself and was ready to go to work . He avoided more talk of voices in the back of his head. The doctors discharged him with advice to attend a psychiatric clinic in Launceston if he felt he needed further treatment.
    Then paranoia set in. Three weeks after his release, a letter was sent to the Deputy Commissioner of the Repatriation, signed by his mother but in his handwriting, requesting information on the diagnosis reached for her son at the hospital. She had heard through outside sources that there was nothing wrong with her son; that he was just putting on an act in order to obtain a pension. She went on to defend his integrity, demanding an explanation for the turns he had, convinced he would never do anything improper that would distress his parents.
    Perhaps his mother had heard the rumour and was affronted. Perhaps she was illiterate, and could produce little more than her own mark, so had dictated the letter to her son. But with a few of his letters before me I’m able to compare their styles and have an uneasy feeling he authored it, then cajoled his mother to sign.
    The Deputy refused to release any details, citing privacy protocols.
    Three weeks later another letter followed. This time it bore his signature and repeated the complaint about slanderous rumours. It authorised his parents to obtain his medical records.
    He should have ended the letter there. But the rumours must have infuriated him. They must have offended his self-esteem and the belief he had in his own integrity. He began to rant: about the leaking of his confidential medical history, which he suspected had found its way into the hands of unauthorised personnel at the Launceston Red Cross; about his doctors—one in particular, who had apparently told him to take up wood chopping as a cure for all his mental problems; and he denied he had ever applied for a pension, other than on discharge.
    And as far as I’m concerned you can take the pension I’m supposed to be trying so hard to get and go to hell with it, both your Department and the great psychiatrists on your Commission.
    He demanded an X-ray of his head to discover what made it ‘behave like nobody’s business’.
    By this stage he had worked himself into a state of pitiful indignation and he threw caution to the wind.
    But this I would like to forward into the great psychiatrist Mr Commissioner, if by chance they [the doctors] should hear of someone being mysteriously killed or even hurt only slightly and I’m the culprit tell them to have a laugh for me would you and to think how they discharged me and said that I was only putting on a big act. I tried to explain all this to the so called doctors but it appears to have been taken with a grain of salt like the rest of the information I so hopefully forewarded [sic] to them.
    But now Mr Commissioner if you’re not in hell, and that’s where your whole department should be along with a few so called mental doctors, seeing I’ve voiced most of my complaints I would just like to ask one more question before I sign off. How do I stand as regards a pension?
    No pension was forthcoming.
    A few months later he threw himself from a bridge into the South Esk River.
    He was fed up with everybody and believed that all were against him.