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'I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy'
One family's struggle with mental illness and drug abuse
BY OLIVIA LEIGH CAMPBELL Sunday Observer staff reporter
Sunday, January 07, 2007
IN August, Lennox Campbell warned his youngest son, Khalil, who struggled for years with mental illness, that if he returned to Jamaica from Miami he would be dead in six months. Tragically, in the realisation every parent's worst nightmare, his predictions became true.
Last Wednesday, Khalil died after being stabbed several times in an incident that has left not just his family but also the family of the alleged stabber, 21-year-old Rodney McDonald Beccles, son of University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus Vice Chancellor Hillarie Beccles, in mourning.
Khalil Campbell in the days before he got sick, and after his illness started affecting his grooming.
But as painful as it will be for them to bury their son, Lennox and Joy Campbell say they are happy his suffering is over, having watched him deteriorate progressively into a shadow of the son they knew, as he struggled with mental illness and drug abuse.
"Right now, my pain is for the parents of that boy, Beccles, because their pain lives on," said Lennox Campbell. "I'm not trying to sound noble, but I am a parent, and I know what I've been through with Khalil. I am sad, and my heart goes out to his family."
Khalil had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and was prescribed medication to regulate his condition. But he refused to take his medicine, and just months before being killed had been released from the University Hospital Psychiatric Ward, just one of the many stints he had spent in medical care for his psychiatric condition.
It wasn't always that way, however.
In his teens, Khalil was athletic and charming, popular among his friends and attractive to girls, a regular guy who loved playing football and hanging out with friends in the Kingston 6 neighbourhood of Mona. He started high school at Wolmer's, but later went on to Jamaica College, was average in the classroom, but outstanding on the football field.
"Khalil's life was football. In school, he played Pepsi Manning Cup, he was on the Jamaica Under 17 squad, and every Saturday it was football, football, football," remembered his cousin Micas Campbell, who was born only two days before Khalil.
"He was a very well-rounded person, the most caring and sensitive of his siblings, and he had lots of friends, girlfriends, he used to go to church, had a normal life," said his mother, Joy, who eventually quit her job at the Ministry of Agriculture to care for Khalil in Miami.
Somewhere along the way, however, things changed. His parents track the point they noticed something was wrong to his first year of university, when he returned for holidays from the University of Guyana.
"When he was in Guyana, we were in constant contact with him via telephone, but when he came back there were indications that something had changed," his father said.
Khalil began wearing sandals only, refusing to cut his hair and habitually smoked ganja, anathema to his parents, who were regular worshippers at Swallowfield Chapel and had raised all four of their children in the church. The transformation was particularly offensive to his father, a Supreme Court judge.
"Whenever he smoked he would change completely. He was never violent, but there was such a big difference, that I said 'wait, him really can't take the ganja'," his mother admitted.
Khalil's parents decided not to send him back to Guyana, but to send him instead to see a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him as having marijuana-induced psychosis. Khalil became more withdrawn and antisocial, and eventually he was admitted to the Cornwall Regional Hospital, where his psychiatrist was stationed, the first of a series of trips in and out of care that would characterise the next decade of his life.
"After that, it was always a struggle. It was a constant fight, especially with the medications," recalls Joy Campbell.
Despite their greatest efforts, Khalil seemed to resist all his parents' attempts to get him well. He refused to speak to his psychiatrist, continued to smoke ganja, and occasionally became verbally abusive to his parents in their own home.
"His behaviour, depending on how the illness went, meant he was quite lucid at times, had quite clear moments, but sometimes it would be obvious that he was pained, and crying, and wouldn't treat his mother so well, and that's how he went," explained his father.
Khalil's behaviour became harder and harder to tolerate, and painful for the Campbells to witness.
"You could see him change, you could see his features change and everything about him was different," his mother added, the grief still evident in her voice. "It's almost impossible to understand what it is for persons who have to care for someone like that."
The family joined MENSANA, a local mental health support group, and leaned heavily on the support of friends, family and their church, but still faced the daily challenge of living with the illness.
Convinced that ganja was a large part of the problem facing their son, the Campbells decided that Khalil would probably be better off away from Jamaica, with its liberal cultural attitude to marijuana and the easy availability of the herb. They sent him to Florida, where he moved in with his older brother, enrolled at the Broward Community College, and began seeing a new psychiatrist. It was only a matter of time, however, before his problems returned.
"The demons came back. There were problems with the multiple medications, and then after a time, because of how the illness manifests itself he had to leave the home of whichever relative he was with, because just the pressure of living with someone else was too much for him," explained Lennox Campbell.
But Khalil hated being away from home, hated being bounced from family member to family member, and begged his parents to let him return to Jamaica.
"I would go up from time to time to see him, and I'd intimate to him that I'd allow him to visit, if he would only display some degree of behaviour that would indicate that he was responsible enough to take his medications and stay away from drugs. And whatever test I gave, he fulfilled it," said Lennox Campbell.
To fulfil his promise to his son, Campbell allowed Khalil to return home. But Jamaica was not the same country it was before he left to go to Miami. His first trip back was for a visit, but one year later, his parents allowed him to come back while they tried to get regular treatment for him here.
This time around, however, was more trying than all others. Again, Khalil refused to see yet another psychiatrist, refused to take his medication, and was disruptive to his family. Despite all that, his parents continued to try their best with him.
"We tried everything. It got to the point where I had to be dropping his medicine in his food, but taken that way I don't know if the medication was covering any ground, because he appeared to continue to be ill, so we made arrangements for him to go back to Ward 21," his father said.
Two months ago, Khalil was released, but the cycle resumed, with no end it seemed, in sight. Last Wednesday afternoon, when they got a call informing them about their son, the Campbells were devastated.
"There is nothing on earth more heart-rending, more traumatic for a family. You do not want this for your worst enemy. You cannot imagine how taxing this has been for the whole family," his mother said.
"I told him, I told him that. In my mind, Jamaica had grown so violent that I didn't think that he could manage, not in the state he was. I told him, given how our society is, 'Khalil, if you were to come here you're going to die within six months'," his father added.
Taxing as it may have been, however, the Campbells say that they were prepared to continue trying in perpetuity, despite the immense cost to the family in both dollars and effort.
"This is a thing with crests and falls, and he could be so warm sometimes. Sometimes he would be fine, you'd sit down and have a long talk and at the end you'd think, maybe this time he's on the way to recovery.
Sometimes he'd seem so clear without the medication that I started to ask the questions, am I doing the right thing? Do the doctors know what they are doing? I wonder if he's better off without them? And you always hope - you grab on to every little sign - you always think, he seems okay, maybe this time is the time he'll make it," said Judge Campbell pensively.
"This disease affected the whole family, and I'm so proud of how much my other children pulled in to support him, but Khalil had been dying for years. The illness took his life. Slowly."
[email protected]
One family's struggle with mental illness and drug abuse
BY OLIVIA LEIGH CAMPBELL Sunday Observer staff reporter
Sunday, January 07, 2007
IN August, Lennox Campbell warned his youngest son, Khalil, who struggled for years with mental illness, that if he returned to Jamaica from Miami he would be dead in six months. Tragically, in the realisation every parent's worst nightmare, his predictions became true.
Last Wednesday, Khalil died after being stabbed several times in an incident that has left not just his family but also the family of the alleged stabber, 21-year-old Rodney McDonald Beccles, son of University of the West Indies Cave Hill campus Vice Chancellor Hillarie Beccles, in mourning.
Khalil Campbell in the days before he got sick, and after his illness started affecting his grooming.
But as painful as it will be for them to bury their son, Lennox and Joy Campbell say they are happy his suffering is over, having watched him deteriorate progressively into a shadow of the son they knew, as he struggled with mental illness and drug abuse.
"Right now, my pain is for the parents of that boy, Beccles, because their pain lives on," said Lennox Campbell. "I'm not trying to sound noble, but I am a parent, and I know what I've been through with Khalil. I am sad, and my heart goes out to his family."
Khalil had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and was prescribed medication to regulate his condition. But he refused to take his medicine, and just months before being killed had been released from the University Hospital Psychiatric Ward, just one of the many stints he had spent in medical care for his psychiatric condition.
It wasn't always that way, however.
In his teens, Khalil was athletic and charming, popular among his friends and attractive to girls, a regular guy who loved playing football and hanging out with friends in the Kingston 6 neighbourhood of Mona. He started high school at Wolmer's, but later went on to Jamaica College, was average in the classroom, but outstanding on the football field.
"Khalil's life was football. In school, he played Pepsi Manning Cup, he was on the Jamaica Under 17 squad, and every Saturday it was football, football, football," remembered his cousin Micas Campbell, who was born only two days before Khalil.
"He was a very well-rounded person, the most caring and sensitive of his siblings, and he had lots of friends, girlfriends, he used to go to church, had a normal life," said his mother, Joy, who eventually quit her job at the Ministry of Agriculture to care for Khalil in Miami.
Somewhere along the way, however, things changed. His parents track the point they noticed something was wrong to his first year of university, when he returned for holidays from the University of Guyana.
"When he was in Guyana, we were in constant contact with him via telephone, but when he came back there were indications that something had changed," his father said.
Khalil began wearing sandals only, refusing to cut his hair and habitually smoked ganja, anathema to his parents, who were regular worshippers at Swallowfield Chapel and had raised all four of their children in the church. The transformation was particularly offensive to his father, a Supreme Court judge.
"Whenever he smoked he would change completely. He was never violent, but there was such a big difference, that I said 'wait, him really can't take the ganja'," his mother admitted.
Khalil's parents decided not to send him back to Guyana, but to send him instead to see a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him as having marijuana-induced psychosis. Khalil became more withdrawn and antisocial, and eventually he was admitted to the Cornwall Regional Hospital, where his psychiatrist was stationed, the first of a series of trips in and out of care that would characterise the next decade of his life.
"After that, it was always a struggle. It was a constant fight, especially with the medications," recalls Joy Campbell.
Despite their greatest efforts, Khalil seemed to resist all his parents' attempts to get him well. He refused to speak to his psychiatrist, continued to smoke ganja, and occasionally became verbally abusive to his parents in their own home.
"His behaviour, depending on how the illness went, meant he was quite lucid at times, had quite clear moments, but sometimes it would be obvious that he was pained, and crying, and wouldn't treat his mother so well, and that's how he went," explained his father.
Khalil's behaviour became harder and harder to tolerate, and painful for the Campbells to witness.
"You could see him change, you could see his features change and everything about him was different," his mother added, the grief still evident in her voice. "It's almost impossible to understand what it is for persons who have to care for someone like that."
The family joined MENSANA, a local mental health support group, and leaned heavily on the support of friends, family and their church, but still faced the daily challenge of living with the illness.
Convinced that ganja was a large part of the problem facing their son, the Campbells decided that Khalil would probably be better off away from Jamaica, with its liberal cultural attitude to marijuana and the easy availability of the herb. They sent him to Florida, where he moved in with his older brother, enrolled at the Broward Community College, and began seeing a new psychiatrist. It was only a matter of time, however, before his problems returned.
"The demons came back. There were problems with the multiple medications, and then after a time, because of how the illness manifests itself he had to leave the home of whichever relative he was with, because just the pressure of living with someone else was too much for him," explained Lennox Campbell.
But Khalil hated being away from home, hated being bounced from family member to family member, and begged his parents to let him return to Jamaica.
"I would go up from time to time to see him, and I'd intimate to him that I'd allow him to visit, if he would only display some degree of behaviour that would indicate that he was responsible enough to take his medications and stay away from drugs. And whatever test I gave, he fulfilled it," said Lennox Campbell.
To fulfil his promise to his son, Campbell allowed Khalil to return home. But Jamaica was not the same country it was before he left to go to Miami. His first trip back was for a visit, but one year later, his parents allowed him to come back while they tried to get regular treatment for him here.
This time around, however, was more trying than all others. Again, Khalil refused to see yet another psychiatrist, refused to take his medication, and was disruptive to his family. Despite all that, his parents continued to try their best with him.
"We tried everything. It got to the point where I had to be dropping his medicine in his food, but taken that way I don't know if the medication was covering any ground, because he appeared to continue to be ill, so we made arrangements for him to go back to Ward 21," his father said.
Two months ago, Khalil was released, but the cycle resumed, with no end it seemed, in sight. Last Wednesday afternoon, when they got a call informing them about their son, the Campbells were devastated.
"There is nothing on earth more heart-rending, more traumatic for a family. You do not want this for your worst enemy. You cannot imagine how taxing this has been for the whole family," his mother said.
"I told him, I told him that. In my mind, Jamaica had grown so violent that I didn't think that he could manage, not in the state he was. I told him, given how our society is, 'Khalil, if you were to come here you're going to die within six months'," his father added.
Taxing as it may have been, however, the Campbells say that they were prepared to continue trying in perpetuity, despite the immense cost to the family in both dollars and effort.
"This is a thing with crests and falls, and he could be so warm sometimes. Sometimes he would be fine, you'd sit down and have a long talk and at the end you'd think, maybe this time he's on the way to recovery.
Sometimes he'd seem so clear without the medication that I started to ask the questions, am I doing the right thing? Do the doctors know what they are doing? I wonder if he's better off without them? And you always hope - you grab on to every little sign - you always think, he seems okay, maybe this time is the time he'll make it," said Judge Campbell pensively.
"This disease affected the whole family, and I'm so proud of how much my other children pulled in to support him, but Khalil had been dying for years. The illness took his life. Slowly."
[email protected]
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