After the fall Finding away back from the brink

Eighteen years ago, Chris Canham jumped off a hospital building, because he thought the devil was after him. He woke three weeks later with broken legs, a smashed pelvis and a hell of a road ahead. But he still felt lucky. By Nikki Macdonald.

Chris Canham inched to the roof’s edge and looked over. Six storeys dropped away to tarmac. ‘‘This will do it,’’ he thought. He’d been admitted to Wellington Hospital’s mental health unit the previous day – a Friday. Kind nurses from the mental health service at Porirua’s Pember House had driven him there in their own car.

He’d recently stopped hismedication again. He’d been stable for 10 years and was feeling pretty good. Maybe he’d grown out of it, he thought.

He was sure he’d recognise the signs if they returned. But the psychosis didn’t knock before entering.

When they admitted him, he saw the chair in his room and knew immediately what it was for. That was where the devil would sit.

Canham wasn’t depressed. He didn’t hate his life. Thatwasn’t why he’d shimmied up the tree in themental health unit yard and climbed up to the nearby building’s roof.

He believed the devil was going to turn him into his apprentice, some kind of antichrist. ‘‘He’s waiting for me,’’ Canham thought. ‘‘I’ve finally blown it now, big time.’’

There seemed only one way out – to kill himself.

Amental health nurse saw him escape and begged him to come down from the roof. But the nurse’s pleaswere no match for the conviction that thiswas whatwas needed to save humankind.

So he jumped.

A happy, healthy childhood

Nothing in Canham’s early childhood pointed to mental health problems.

Born in 1965, his earliest memory was watching the 1969 Moon landing on the family’s old black and white TV.

The middle child of three, growing up in a loving family in Hamilton, Canham was a happy kid living in an innocent time. They’d go camping at Mt Maunganui and watch the dolphins at Napier’s Marineland.

His dad Nigel was a draughtsman for Lands and Survey and loved the outdoors. Theywould tramp in the local hills and, for aweek in August, they’d stay in a tramping club hut at Mt Ruapehu and go skiing.

Canhamwas into athletics and football and got his yellow belt in judo. He liked animals and read a lot – writers like Born Free author Joy Adamson. He reckoned he might go to Africa and work with big game.

But at 13, the family moved south to Wellington. Canham never really settled at Aotea College in Porirua. In the sixth form, his schoolmarks tailed off and he became depressed. Girlfriend issues. Parent issues. Usual teenage stuff he couldn’t talk to his parents about.

The school counsellor wasn’t much help, either. Canham felt fobbed off – ‘‘pull your socks up, play rugby, you’ll be right’’ seemed to be the message.

His schoolwork declined so badly that he failed University Entrance, so he left school to be an apprenticemechanic. His boss was great, the money paid for beers. He grew up, left home, joined Hutt Valley Tramping Club. And, for a while, the dark thoughts slunk away.

The trip that started everything

A hash cookie proved Canham’s passport to paranoia. At Christmas 1986, he jarred his back on a tramping trip and the depression slid back in.

He was in a party flat – a revolving door of drinking and cannabis smoking. He’d been smoking dope at weekends for three years with no obvious side effects. But one night a flatmate cooked up a hash cookie, which seemed to flick a switch.

Canham wasn’t religious then, but from somewhere his mind conjured the devil into the room. Itwas a really bad trip, lasting all day and all night. He thought the devil was going to get him. The trip wore off. The psychosis didn’t. The next day, he swore off drugs for life. But the damage was done. Three months later, inAugust, slow paranoia turned to full-blown psychosis. He just unravelled.

After a weekend of fearing the devil, wired with no sleep, he wanted to kill himself. Instead, he turned up to his mechanics apprentice job at the Hutt Valley Energy Board. Colleagues realised he needed urgent help and tookhim to Hutt Hospital, from where he was driven by ambulance to a Porirua psych unit.

He was with it enough to be terrified. Terrified he’d end up in a padded cell, screaming, going insane. That that would be his life and he couldn’t do anything about it.

Oneminute he’d almost finished his mechanics apprenticeship and was ready to head to London to see his sister. The next he was in hospital. He was 22.

‘‘I was all ready to take on the world and have a good time and, bang, it just changed overnight. Just one hash cookie. That started everything.’’

The fall

When Canham’s body hit the tarmac with the gravitational force of six storeys, it

broke. His pelvis shattered. Compound fractures of both legs. A broken right wrist. He needed aggressive resuscitation and urgent treatment to stem the bleeding from his pelvic fractures.

His mother Jillwas supposed to be visiting him for lunch. Doctors told her hewould live, but might be brain-damaged.

One thing probably saved Canham’s life – that he jumped on the grounds of a hospital.

Somewhere between roof and impact, Canham had blacked out. Doctors put him in a coma to help his body recover from the shock.

When he woke up three weeks later, he couldn’t move. His fractured legs and right wrist were set in plaster, his smashed pelvis pinned together. He was on morphine and old-school antipsychotic drug haloperidol.

‘‘The first thing Iwanted was a coffee,’’ Canham laughs. ‘‘I felt good mentally. Iwas totally nonpsychotic. I was grateful Iwas alive.’’

Thatwas 2004. It was the last of Canham’s several stays in hospital psych units. From that first episode in 1987, he had yo-yoed between stable and psychotic.

Anti-depressants and antipsychotic drugs kept the devil away, but they also robbed him of energy and motivation and limited his ability to work. So every nowand then, Canham would decide (‘‘in my wisdom’’, he laughs) that he didn’t need them any more. And every time, he would land back in hospital.

But thatwas the last time. ‘‘I nearly died and I realised I caused so much pain to myself and to mymumand to those aroundme that I thought I would never come offmeds again. Nomatter how

I felt.

‘‘For me personally, I need medication, I realised. Even though I don’t really want to take it, because it slows me down so much. I need it. It’s the lesser evil – of ending up killing myself or being again in a psychiatric hospital.’’

A view into the past

Canham announces his arrival in metallic morse code. Tac, tac pause; tac, tac pause go his two crutches in quick succession.

The fibreglass socket attaching his prosthetic leg to his left knee beams orange – Canhamwanted something that would stand out and orange is his favourite colour.

The left lower leg was too messed up to save. Doctors suggested amputating the right one, too, but hewanted to keep one leg. The tradeoff is an inflexible ankle that causes him pain.

He can still walk, but only for short distances. It’s one of the small pleasures that has kept him going these past 18 years.

Out the back of theWellington suburb of Karori, up a winding road, isWrights Hill – one of Canham’s favourite destinations.

Dressed in shorts and a Swazi fleece vest, a tuft of greying hair curling up from under his beanie, and awiry bristle of beard and moustache, Canham looks a little bitwild man.

But then he starts talking history – tales of the coastal goldmines and old World War II gun emplacements.

He settles on to a bench overlooking WellingtonHarbour. To the left, the wind turbines of Mākara’s WestWind chop at the dark distant silhouette of the South Island.

Family friends owned a bach south of Mākara, at Te Ikaamaru Bay, where the Canhams would sometimes spend holidays. That brings back good memories.

And as a teenager, Canham would roam those ridgelines.

Now, his farthest reach is the right-hand turbine on Quartz Hill – a short walk from the car park puts you beneath the impressive tower.

Mt Kaukau also used to be a walking favourite, and the Skyline Walkway from there to Mākara. ‘‘I used to do that a lot,’’ Canham says. ‘‘When I had legs.’’

And in the far folds on the horizon, the Tararua Range. ‘‘It’s a good view for me – seeing all the old tramping places. The Tararua ridgeline reminds me of Dad.’’

He doesn’t sound bitter, or even wistful. He’s come to a place of acceptance. But the journey to get here has not been easy.

Battling deep depression

Pinned and plaster-bound on that hospital bed, Canham didn’t really understand the extent of his injuries.

He was visited, fussed over and served tubs of ice cream. When he tired of hospital food, he ordered Pizza Hut from down the road.

It wasn’t until he returned to his flat at Christmas 2004, after four months in hospital and another three at his mother’s place, that the reality of what he’d lost sank in.

‘‘My colostomy bag was causing me issues. About three times a week it would just come off and I’d be covered in crap. That was the worst.

‘‘And I suddenly realised what kept me going in the past – going hiking and tramping – doing something physical that kept my spirits up . . . I couldn’t really do that any more.

‘‘And yeah, I just got really in a black dog depression. It was so bad I really thought Iwould kill myself. Not because Iwas psychotic, but because Iwasn’t going to live like this. I’d rather be dead.’’

Canham isn’t angry at the mental health unit for failing to keep him safe, even though staff had previously raised concerns about the tree in the yard, which has since been cut down.

While the mental health service messed up on that occasion, it saved his life on many others.

That included pulling him out of that black dog depression. For a couple of years, Canham talked every weekwith Pember House psychologist Natalie Coynash.

‘‘They helped me through it. If I hadn’t had support from Pember House, Iwould have killed myself.’’

An ACC accident payout was also a lifesaver. He bought a little sports car and drove around the South and North islands, visiting friends. Just feeling he could get out and do things helped jolt him out of the depression.

It’s easier to say you’ve got depression, rather than say you’re psychotic

Canham has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder – a combo of long-term depression and psychosis.

He was discharged from specialist mental health care to his GP in about 2010, because he was considered stable.

He jokes that depression is now so widespread that authorities should put antidepressants in the water supply. But psychosis still carries a social stigma.

‘‘It’s easier to say you’ve got depression, rather than say you’re psychotic. Everyone’s got depression, but psychosis is kind of like: ‘Oh, he’s crazy’.’’

When he met a woman he was keen on a few years back, he gave a creative explanation for his injuries. ‘‘I was too scared to tell her the truth, so I said I had a climbing accident. I didn’t want to freak her out.’’

Graham Mellsop, Auckland University emeritus professor of psychiatry, has researched the links between cannabis use and psychosis inNew Zealand.

While there were reports during the Vietnam War of acute deliriumtype psychosis in US servicemen taking big doses of strong cannabis, he doubts that a single hash cookie could trigger ongoing psychosis.

Some people with mental health problems use cannabis to selfmedicate. But heavy regular cannabis use can also raise the risk of developing psychotic symptoms, especially in young people, Mellsop says.

‘‘If they hadn’t used the cannabis, they would never have developed the psychosis. A lot of them are long-term. That’s why it’s such aworry.’’

Canham doesn’tmind the schizoaffective label – at least having the right diagnosis means you get the right treatment.

After one early psychotic episode, Canham spent a year at his parents’ house, staying in bed till afternoon, torn between a lifetime of torment and killing himself and going straight to hell.

‘‘I had no hope. This was life. I’d lost everything.’’

It wasn’t until his parents got a secondmedical opinion, and a medication regime change, that he finally came out of it.

Canham still takes antipsychotic haloperidol and antidepressant citalopram. Drugs, though, are not a miracle solution, he says.

‘‘Themedication, of course, helps, but it comes half way. You have to do your part, in living a positive life: by looking after what you eat; exercise; moderation in