SCOTT SIMMIE

The police had been called because Yu struck a woman bystander at a bus shelter. The suspect was alone on a bus when the officers arrived. Witnesses say he pulled a small hammer from his coat. In response, three officers pulled their service revolvers from their holsters. Six shots were fired; three silenced his troubled mind. Yu, an immigrant from Hong Kong, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was 35. In 1995, long before I had heard of Edmond Yu, I was in the city where he was born. I too was standing on a bus. 

There is no mental health system.  There are plenty of parts, some of them very good parts, but ``there is no system.'' During a year of research into mental health reform, that phrase was repeated endlessly. It was uttered with frustration, anger, apathy - even desperation. It was uttered by doctors, hospital administrators, outreach workers and - most importantly - people with mental health problems: ``There is no system.''  The disconnected components of our non-system include jails, boarding houses, hostels and park benches. And poverty. And stigma. And isolation. There are, of course, good parts. Things that work. But there aren't enough of them - and they rarely connect.  Every time they fail to connect, we fail a human being.  This series by Scott Simmie, this year's recipient of the Atkinson Fellowship in Public Policy, will examine some of the fragments of Ontario's non-system. A system that seems content to leave people with mental health problems out of sight - and out of mind.

My hands were clenched around the overhead pole with tremendous force - even though the vehicle was stationary. Five Hong Kong police officers were attempting to dislodge me. I was wearing only a hospital gown; I was in bare feet. 

I will never know what Edmond Yu was thinking during his confrontation. But during my own standoff, I believed the police were evil personified. They clearly had just one goal: to kill me. Remaining on the bus, escaping, would mean my survival. The police did not understand this; they saw only a madman. When they finally did extract me, I was handcuffed with such force one wrist was cut. Those same officers dragged me, screaming, into a nearby hospital. As police and hospital staff struggled to pin me to a bed, a nurse came running with a large syringe. She jammed it into my thigh. Four orderlies forced me into a straitjacket, then tied my feet and wrists to the bed. More than three years later, there are still marks on one ankle. 

This, then, is my story. And Edmond's. The story of how his death, and my own encounter with madness, led to this project. 

During the day, in terms of my ability to work, things were fine. I could still write scripts, book satellite feeds, plan coverage - all the things a producer is supposed to do. But I was also more talkative than usual, more animated. I started chatting about business ideas, some of them slightly grandiose, with colleagues. I was starting to feel powerful. 

That sense of power, that energy, did not leave me at night. So, in a form of self-medication common with this condition, I would pour a drink to relax. Scotch and active mental illness are not a great combination. Add a laptop computer equipped with modem and you have a dangerous mix. 

I sent notes, of which I am not proud, to management. I would subsequently send more messages, trying to rectify the situation. 

A manager, who detected something amiss from afar, suggested I leave Moscow and return to a position in Canada. 

The notion seemed inconceivable. I was feeling, by this point, exceptional. He agreed to retain me in the post, subject to quarterly reviews of my performance. I was, in effect, on probation. And, despite this scrape with management, feeling great. 

During the day, in terms of my ability to work, things were fine. I could still write scripts, book satellite feeds, plan coverage - all the things a producer is supposed to do. But I was also more talkative than usual, more animated. I started chatting about business ideas, some of them slightly grandiose, with colleagues. I was starting to feel powerful.

The crunch came in May, during the completion of the Victory in Europe celebrations. Other CBC correspondents - along with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien - were en route to Moscow. There had been satellite feeds to book, briefing notes to write, accreditation to prepare, transportation to schedule. 

The finale of the celebrations was to be a major parade in Moscow, followed by a summit between Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton. On the eve of that parade, the other CBC correspondents arrived in the Russian capital. 

After a full day's work at the bureau, I met them at a late-night hotel briefing. Their equipment, hundreds of kilograms of it, was delayed at the airport. I volunteered to return to the bureau and await its arrival. 

The gear didn't reach the office until roughly 2 am. I helped the bureau's driver unload, which took about an hour. 

Under normal circumstances, I should have been exhausted. 

But I was now in the seductive grip of what I would later learn is hypomania, the stage of the illness that precedes full-blown mania. Seductive, because you feel so bloody excellent. Capable. Charged. In control. The parade was just hours away; I had to ensure everything at the bureau was ready. I stayed there all night, typing up more background notes for the correspondents. 

Even the smallest details of that period are still with me. My editorial grasp of the story, my news skills, remained intact. My grip on myself, however, was slipping. 

On the final night, after writing the final script of the summit, I snapped. I blew up at our Russian editor - not entirely without cause - and at the correspondent who had hired her. There was certainly no violence or threat of violence. But I did yell. And that's not like me. 

The correspondent phoned senior managers back in Canada. I was telephoned from Toronto a day later and told I was barred from the CBC's Moscow office pending an investigation. I was also barred from having any contact with my fellow employees. 

I felt betrayed. And isolated. 

The results of the investigation were not shared with me. Two managers, on the phone from Toronto, shared only its conclusion: ``Your position has been terminated,'' I was told. There was no mention of my mental health, no mention of my job performance, not even any mention of ``the incident.'' In fact, no reason at all was offered for the decision. I was pointedly told to return to Canada, to my old job on the writing desk. 

I discovered, during my next attempt to log in to the network, that my messaging privileges on the CBC computer system had been revoked. 

I was in shock. I had worked very hard for the CBC over the years; my career was a huge part of my life. This was a crisis. 

And crises are not good for hypomania. I was, prior to this point, sleeping about four hours a night. After being removed from the post, I slept less. I was now on the road to full-blown mania, a condition marked by the textbook symptoms of delusions of grandeur, grandiose business schemes, foolish spending. 

The illness is a sneaky one. It tends, during its early stages, to put a positive spin on everything. So, after the initial disbelief at losing the Moscow position, I convinced myself it was meant to happen, part of a grand plan that would soon reveal itself in all its glory. It soon did. But it wasn't so glorious. 

My partner Julia Nunes and I were still owed one trip as part of my Moscow contract. The CBC agreed that we would be allowed to take it. I chose China; where I had lived from 1986-88, where I had returned in '89 to help cover the student movement in Tiananmen Square. (I had also co-authored a book on China following those events.) 

The full details of that trip are too numerous and incredible to describe. But try to imagine every one of your senses sharpened to a paranormal level; your soul fuelled by fire. Coincidences, synchronicity, compassion abound. You embrace a badly deformed beggar with empty eye sockets. He hugs you back. At the summit of the Great Wall, the one person you meet - out of thousands - is a Chinese woman whose son now lives in your home town. A furious storm marks the anniversary of Tiananmen Square, exploding an electrical substation outside your hotel window. The secrets of the world's oldest civilization reveal themselves to you. You have been touched by God. Chosen. 

As part of this transformation, I adopted - temporarily - a new name. When you tell someone in China that you are from Canada, they invariably invoke the name of Dr. Norman Bethune. His Chinese name was a clever transliteration of Bethune; Bai Chou An - literally, White Seeking Peace. I started to tell people that, while I was not Bethune, I was indeed a White Seeking Peace. My Chinese acquaintances thought this was quite profound. Believe me, I did. 

In this state of mind, you believe anything is possible. So I decided, since I believed the CBC career was clearly over, to fulfil my destiny as an entrepreneur. And empty my bank account. 

This is not atypical of bipolar affective disorder. Many people with the illness spend their way to financial ruin in a very short space of time. One Vancouver man purchased a personal submarine while ill. I chose antique Chinese furniture. 

In the space of a few short days, I spent $25,000. We also arranged to have the furniture shipped to Canada. I recall picturing myself, surrounded by admiring friends, at the launch of our new and undoubtedly successful venture. 

When Julia questioned my lack of a concrete business plan, our lack of a store for that matter, I was quick with an enthusiastic response. ``We'll sell it from the dock!'' I proudly proclaimed. Never underestimate the power of persuasion of someone in a sub-manic state. Nor, in this case, the stupidity. 

At one point I contacted my Toronto real estate agent - told him I wanted to purchase a building for the store. The agent, who's a tall bald guy, is very successful in the field. It suddenly dawned on me that he was bald because he was a Buddhist! Clearly this was an ingredient in his domination of the Toronto condo market. 

As the trip grew to a close, I worsened. I began to divide the world - and those in it - into two neat categories. Good and bad. The universe was sharply delineated; an epic battle would decide its future. 

Evidence of this was everywhere, my neurons firing so rapidly that everything became ``a sign.'' The omnipresent Chinese imagery of two dragons, in eternal struggle over a flaming pearl, became my reference point for the universe. Wars, poverty, injustice - even heaven and hell - could be interpreted as those two dragons. 

Shortly before boarding a jet from Beijing to Hong Kong, we discovered that our video camera, and some very precious tapes which had documented my ``spiritual transformation,'' were missing. After filing a report of loss, we got on board. An elderly Tibetan monk was sitting two rows in front of us. He would know, I thought, where the camera was, how to get it back. He would know. I sat, in a contemplative state, waiting for some sign that I should contact him. The answer came, calmly, in a single word. ``Yes.'' I say ``word'' because that's what I heard. An actual voice, resolute, compelling, filled my head. ``Yes.'' 

Except no one near me was speaking. 

One might reasonably think, given I had never heard a voice in my head during the previous 34 years of my life, that I would find this frightening. Or at the very least odd. It was, instead, exhilarating. I had, I believed, achieved a state of telepathy. I walked to the monk, handed him a small carved gourd and my Amex Gold card. He accepted the items and closed his eyes. He would, I knew, use his powers to find our camera. We never did recover it. (Julia did, however, get the credit card back.) 

By the time we reached Hong Kong, I had - though completely unaware of it - broken with reality. I was in my own reality. Standing on the edge of the harbour, something told me to drop my running shoes into the water. 

Plop.Plop. They began to float, right-side up, toward the ocean. 

They remained parallel, though the right, then the left, would advance. They were, it appeared, walking on water. 

It was a remarkable sight. I bathed my feet in a puddle and turned. The word ``Wise'' was spray-painted on scores of huge wooden spools in a storage yard. I was wise. Four crates, which looked like coffins, were stacked near the water. 

Three of them were labelled ``CH'' - which I interpreted as meaning the three occasions I was in danger in Chechnya. Psychiatrists would call this ``ideas of reference'' - the belief that these words were messages meant solely for me. It sure felt like it. 

The fourth crate was labelled ``SS'' - my initials. This was powerful stuff. I noticed a long staff of bamboo beside me. 

Exact dimensions of a fishing pole. I picked it up and began to walk, barefoot. I felt like Christ. Buddha. Both. 

By the time we reached our hotel that night, Julia was becoming frightened. Fearful of my state of mind, my bizarre behaviour. (I was, at one point, standing motionless on one leg on top of a chair; a pose that may or may not have had its roots in Tai Qi.) I tried to cleanse Julia's fear, her inability to see the world through my reborn eyes, by splashing Chinese liquor on her; the equivalent, in my state of mind, of holy water. I threw three paintings, done for us in Beijing by one of China's most prominent artists, out the window as an offering to the Gods. 

I danced, sang, prayed. The Gods never came. But in the morning, after a phone call from Julia, the ambulance did. 

I had not slept all night, and was still highly energized when the attendants arrived. I shut myself in the bathroom, filled the tub with water and sacred objects, and was ``baptizing'' myself - still confident I could trigger the second coming. Whatever tenuous threads I had to reality were gone. When I met the attendants - soaking wet and half naked - I explained there was no problem, only that I could not sleep, that I was filled with Qi, or energy. ``What kind of Qi?'' asked the paramedic. ``This kind,'' I said, assuming a martial arts stance then effortlessly punching a neat hole through the closet door for emphasis. 

The paramedic, to his great credit, recognized an illness and worked with the psychosis instead of against it. 

He did not restrain me, did not threaten force. Instead, he gently put his hands together and began to chant a Buddhist prayer for peace. 

Ahhh, a fellow Buddhist. Someone good. Perhaps it is time to rest. I lay down on the bed, felt myself begin to relax, and allowed myself to be placed on a stretcher. 

Soon after reaching the hospital, I was again feeling energized. Enough resting. This hospital thing was surely part of my mission, my test. I asked a doctor if I was free to leave; he granted permission to do so. 

I wandered the hospital halls, dressed only in a gown, followed by police.

 I kept noticing direction signs with arrows pointing toward the morgue. I interpreted them as omens: that the hospital equalled mortal danger. I was intent on avoiding a return. 

Outside, I boarded a bus. The police ordered the driver not to continue on his route. I screamed to the passengers: ``If any of you are Buddhists, please help me!'' 

I then grabbed the overhead pole and mentally welded my hands in place. I pictured myself as a tree, an oak, that could not be budged. Indeed, it took five officers some time before I was budged. I was in absolute terror as they dragged me back into the hospital. 

After the injection wore off, I awoke to find myself thoroughly restrained. Not just by a straitjacket, but by long strips of cloth which bound my ankles and wrists to the bed. The Chinese tie excellent knots. 

I was taken to a massive crumbling complex just outside the city and kept there on a judge's order for five days. I was the only Caucasian, and - with the exception of the few patients who spoke English - had to rely on my Mandarin. 

``Why are you here?'' asked one. 

``I have too much Qi,'' I explained. 

``I also have too much Qi,'' he replied. ``I bit my sister.'' 

Delusions are adaptable things; highly malleable to situation. The fact I was locked up against my will did not occur to me. The fact I was surrounded by people in varying degrees of psychosis did not trouble me. I believed, as the ambulance attendant had told me, I was going to ``a nice place.'' A place where devout Buddhists like myself would gather to use our powers collectively. 

I was segregated, along with five other patients, from the general population of the ward. It was night, and most of the others were in a chain-link fence smoking area outside our sole window. I could make out only dark shadows, the faint glint of eyes, as they stared in at the new arrival. Perhaps they were evil, perhaps my job was to convert them. I held a cigarette to the window as an initial peace offering. A quick movement plucked the smoke from my hand; a moment later a freshly lit cigarette was offered back to me. Progress. 

The clinical staff was fascinated that they had a Western journalist in their midst. Surprised, too, since the same ward was the involuntary home to a senior CNN correspondent just the week before. He had scrawled his well-known name on the wall. 

One nurse was particularly intrigued with the fact I had recently been in Moscow, Chechnya, Beijing, and now Hong Kong. Also with the fact that I could speak passable Mandarin. ``Are you a spy?'' he asked me repeatedly. ``You must be a spy. Are you a spy?'' 

I have many memories of that facility, of the caged fences, the locks, the filth. But the images that endure are ones of kindness from fellow patients. The sharing of food. Of cigarettes. Of situation. One older Chinese, with an empathy and compassion I shall never forget, helped undress and shower me in a small washroom. Despite the excrement on the floor, there was a remarkable dignity to the act. Another Chinese, a big man, was fond of giving me piggy-back rides around our compound. 

While I was nuts on the inside, Julia was going nuts on the outside. Trying to cope with the fact her partner was in an asylum. Trying to keep family members up to date with the situation. Trying to figure out how to get me out of there and back home. Trying to cope with almost all of this on her own, halfway around the world. 

Close friends and colleagues - including Peter Mansbridge - called her to offer assistance. A good pal gave Julia his calling card number and told her to make as many overseas calls as were necessary. 

Yet not a single editorial manager - people I'd worked with for years - called Julia to ask how I was or offer help. 

It was a stark contrast to other situations where CBC employees have been ill while abroad. In one case, a correspondent was hit by a rubber bullet in the West Bank. A manager flew from London to ensure he received the best possible care. Another employee, with an alcohol abuse problem, had been directed to treatment. 

But there's something about a mental illness that scares the hell out of people. They don't know how to react. 

The Canadian consulate helped arrange my release from the hospital. We flew from Hong Kong back to Vancouver and then on to Saskatoon. I was, though now on medication, still manic. I saw another doctor there who patiently explained, on three separate occasions, that I had bipolar affective disorder and should again be hospitalized. 

Eventually, I agreed. Two weeks in hospital was long enough for the drugs to start dragging the mania - and all joy - out of me. I began to discover that, in the words of Edmond Yu, ``reality can sometimes be painful.'' 

We returned to Toronto. I was heavily drugged with an anti-psychotic called Haloperidol, or Haldol. I walked like an old man - nurses call it ``The Haldol Shuffle'' - and felt like one. A new doctor, whom I had to wait weeks to see, put me on other drugs. They caused my vision to blur to the point where I could not read, caused my skin to break out in spots. I had been warned of neither of these side effects. 

I felt like I was aging, withering. Disintegrating. 

A few weeks later, a brunch was held to celebrate a friend's marriage. I attended, in such a fog of medication I felt trapped in another dimension. I recall a profound sense of shame over my illness that day, an awareness that previously close friends were avoiding eye contact. I felt a desperate, helpless need to somehow explain that this shuffling shell, this stranger with the slow speech and the dead eyes, was not me. The reality of my situation was beginning to sink in. 

And, of course, the furniture arrived. An entire container load. 

The spiral into depression was fast. Part of that depression is the natural cycle of the illness: what goes up must come down. But a large part of that depression was caused by the situation I found myself in. There was, of course, the pure shock of being diagnosed with a mental illness, a label I feared would curse the rest of my life. And then there were the big tangibles, lots of them. I had lost what I had coveted most during my professional career: a foreign posting. I had spent all my money. My reputation was toast. 

And we had all that cursed furniture. All the furniture in China. 

The road to recovery was a long one. I spent weeks in bed, unable to find any worthwhile reason to get up. Sleep was my drug, the only - though temporary - way to escape the reality that had befallen me. 

When awake I brooded, almost obsessively, on death. Pictured myself rigging pulleys so I could hang myself in the condo, figured if I had two pulleys I could actually haul myself up. Browsed through The Final Exit - a suicide manual - while in a bookstore. Wished countless times that it had been a horrendous physical ailment instead. If only an arm had been crushed, a leg blown off. That I could have come to terms with. Anything but this. 

Then there were the pills. Mood stabilizers. Tranquillizers. Anti-convulsants. Anti-depressants. Pills to take away side effects. An entire pharmacy in the kitchen cupboard. I hated it. 

I remember telling Julia frequently that, without her support, I would be dead. (Though I often felt that would be preferable.) My family called often, enduring the relentless misery they heard in my voice. A small - then smaller - core of friends showed tremendous understanding and patience. 

Over time, a long time, I began to realize I would survive. The pile of furniture wound up in a consignment store and slowly diminished. The medication, with a new psychiatrist, was altered and reduced. Food gradually regained its taste. There became reasons to shave. I remembered how to smile. Relearned that a sunset was more than a prelude to night. 

Two doctors - including the most prominent bipolar affective disorder specialist in Canada - have since informed me that if the illness had been caught in Moscow, I could have been treated and back at work within two weeks. 

When I finally did return to work, most colleagues said a polite ``Hello'' and little else. 

Some didn't even say that, preferring instead to avert their eyes to some invisible distraction on the floor. (Some colleagues were great. They were, unfortunately, the exceptions.) 

My doctor wrote management a letter stating that I had a clean bill of health. She recommended I be returned to a foreign posting - a position that had clearly been interrupted by illness. 

''That's impossible,'' I was told, though the manager didn't rule out the possibility that it could occur in the future.

Dismayed by all this, I sought the advice of a couple of senior people I trusted. After explaining the situation, one offered this uplifting bit of advice: ``You were lucky they didn't fire you,'' he said. The other said simply: ``I don't know what you did, but in the space of one day your reputation, in the minds of many, went from being very high to rock bottom,'' he said. 

I would remind the many that the odds are one in eight that you will develop a mental health problem requiring medical intervention or hospitalization during your lifetime. It's almost a certainty that a serious mental health problem will touch someone close to you. 

Advocate Pat Capponi, when I began this project, cited the things people with a mental illness need. ``A home, a job, a friend.'' The same kinds of things anyone needs to lead a meaningful life. It didn't make much sense to me at the time. Perhaps I had distanced myself from my own experience, perhaps I was too wrapped up reading about bed cuts, budgets, hospital closures. 

In the past, I had tended to think having a good doctor - and she is - was the most important factor in recovery. But the medical side - though important - was just part of the equation. By far, the strongest supports necessary for my recovery were those closest to home. 

Had the support of my relationship, family and friends not been there, I would have been forced to fight this illness on my own. Without the benefit of decent insurance, I would have lost my home. If the Ontario Disability Support Program were my only source of income, I would have surely been reduced to a rooming house or boarding home. An inexplicable gap, growing ever larger, would blot my resume. 

While I was nuts on the inside, Julia was going nuts on the outside. Trying to cope with the fact her partner was in an asylum. Trying to keep family members up to date with the situation. Trying to figure out how to get me out of there and back home. Trying to cope with almost all of this on her own, halfway around the world.

With little spare money for clothes, I would be shopping at the Salvation Army. Eventually, I could have been sharing a dingy room in a boarding house with a complete stranger. My income, after paying housing, might have been $40 a week. And then how would my mental health be? How would your mental health be? The result, over time, would be clear: a continual loss of friends, of opportunities, of hope. 

We have in place a system, and a mindset, that places little value on a person who's been labelled with a mental illness. Our system dumps vast numbers of people in a very dark hole, and lets them glimpse, only rarely, the shadow of a ladder. For many, it's a strategy guaranteed to keep them unwell. 

A senior official within the Ontario Ministry of Health, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed great frustration with the system. ``I think in our society - and I think medicine reflects it and health care reflects it - we don't really value the mentally ill as a society,'' the official said. ``And underneath (the illness) is some brilliant guy, or some courtly woman with a sense of humour. You just want to weep. And we as a society don't value those individuals. Talk about kicking someone when they're down.'' 

I think back, on occasion, to when I awoke in that Hong Kong hospital. The straitjacket immobilized my arms; lengths of heavy cloth further restrained my hands and feet from the slightest movement. 

Still manic, I was determined to be free of those chains. 

Slowly, with remarkable agility for a single bound hand, I began to manipulate the knots crushing my right wrist. One knot came undone, then another. My left hand began to pluck toward its own freedom. Soon, the knots were gone. I even managed, in a Houdini-like feat, to remove the straitjacket itself - much to the astonishment of hospital staff. 

I have seen, throughout this project, many people in this country trapped in permanent straitjackets. The buckles rarely loosen, the weave of the fabric has little give. Individuals whose supports have trickled or tumbled away, whose dreams of the possible have vanished. People who once had good jobs, good homes, good futures. Sons, daughters, parents, spouses. Edmond Yu. 

I have seen, over the past year, that many paths lead into this vortex. And not enough lead out.