Mental Illness

One of the greatest challenges in Ethiopia is dealing with mental illness. There is no counseling, no psychologists, no therapists, little medicine, and no organization to take on the overwhelming problem that so many people face with mental illnesses. We have many people coming to us for help, but we, like every other aid organization, are not equipped to handle such needs.
However, there are a few extreme cases that we have tried to take on. Some have resulted in success, and some remain to be a constant challenge. Taysi is one of the one of the unfortunate ones. She is a very sweet, happy girl. Big dimples form and her eyes seem to be swallowed up by her cheeks when she smiles. She stands with her toes pointed at an angle and her stomach arched out as if she just had a huge meal. She greets everyone with a shy twist of her head.
Taysi comes from an area of southern Ethiopia that seems to breed epileptics. The way the locals deal with the unfortunate disease is to throw the child in the river or fire in order to rid the population of the “evil spirit”. When Taysi began to have seizures as a young girl, she had that dreadful death wish placed upon her. However, a friend intervened and brought her to our clinic in a desperate attempt to save her life. We had taken others like her into our children’s program and watched as they thrived and grew and began living normal lives. We agreed to take her, with the hope that she too would become healthy and strong after being put on proper medication. However, after 2 years of being in the children’s home, she showed no improvement in her mental capacity. Her seizures had stopped, but it was too late. She had already had permanent brain damage caused by the long period of untreated seizures.
Although Taysi is very amiable, she deals with change and problems and frustration very differently. Her way of dealing with unpleasant circumstances is to become violent or to run away or to refuse to obey any commands. Many times she has refused to sleep inside the house, but prefers to sleep outside on the grass or in the rain. To her, this is a comfort when things seem to go awry. After her seizures began, her mother forced her to sleep outside, and this became “normal” to her. And when she is unhappy, she reverts to this sort of behavior. Or if she is upset by something someone says or is forced to do something she does not want to do, she will run away, sometimes in the middle of the night, and we are bid to go find her.
We have exhausted all possibilities and resources. Everyone has rejected her because she is “too much trouble.” We have no one else to take care of her. I have prayed and cried and worried about this girl that seems to steal your heart with her smile. And the cruel fact is that we are in a world that does not deal with such problems. They throw them away. And as an organization, we are not equipped to handle such cases. But as a person, and as a Christian, I am compelled to love this girl and not just throw her away. I know God looks at her and glories in His creation. She is special. She is precious, and she is of infinite worth to Him. Although she may be rejected by everyone else, I am confident that God has not rejected her. And I pray that He gives me the strength and grace to do the same.

Faith