(本文作者为英国VSO志愿者，现在湖南省任教)

　　Many people prefer not to talk about mental illness - it's not a pleasant subject, after all. Most people think it doesn't concern them. I used to be one of them. But that was before my younger brother spent two years in and out of mental hospitals in England. My brother was only 16 the first time he was admitted to hospital.

　　No one knows what made him ill:so far as we could see, his illness came from out of nowhere. Now I know, however, that the first signs of mental illness often turn up in both boys and girls in their teens.

　　In the beginning I found it hard to believe he would be in hospital for long. Every time I went to visit him I expected the doctors to say that it was all a mistake, that he could go home with us. They never did. In time I got used to the idea of his being in hospital. The longer he was there, the further away he drifted from reality and from us. I began to fear that the day would come when he no longer knew who I was or why I was visiting.

　　One memory that still disturbs me is of going to see him for the first time in hospital.It was Christmas Day in 1999. I had come home from university to spend time with my family and see my friends.Two days before Christmas I had attended a party to getsintosthe festive spirit.When I came home from a friend's house on Christmas Eve, I saw my mother's face and knew at once that something terrible had happened. My parents told me my brother had had to go back to hospital.The news made me feel as if I had a stone in my stomach. 'Haven't we all been through this once before?' I asked myself.

　　On Christmas Day we drove to the hospital one and a half hours away. We sat in the doctor's office as she explained in very difficult technical terminology things I didn't understand. She could tell me the names of the drugs and sedatives my brother had been given but she couldn't tell me what I really wanted to know: Why? Why him? Why now?

　　I wept as I listened to the doctors discuss him. Finally they told me that if I didn't stop crying I couldn't see my brother, as they didn't want me to upset him. I swallowed hard and promised not to cry.

　　Guided down a long, cold corridor, I was only allowed to look at him through the window in the door of his room. There he lay, asleep in bed, heavily sedated.He wouldn't wake up for a few days. I stood at his window and watched him sleep, thinking how much I loved him.

　　I wanted to give him some Christmas presents when he woke up, something to put a little normality backsintoshis life. I had brought him some jumping beans, children's toys shaped like beans.They have small weights inside them; when you put them on a flat surface they move by themselves and seem alive. I brought them to the hospital but the doctors wouldn't let me give them to him.They were afraid he would mistake them for medicinal tablets and try to eat them! This made me angry: I felt that the doctors were assuming too much control over his life. It took me a long time to accept that this was part of their job.

　　Over the next 6 months I saw him in the hospital many times. His mental state varied:sometimes he was happy, sometimes sad, and at other times he was so confused I didn't understand him at all. I was frightened when I couldn't understand him because I didn't want him to know that he was making no sense. Deep down, I thought, all he wants is for people to understand him. And all I wanted was to understand him.

　　Most of the time his eyes were swollen and his behaviour was subdued, as a result of the medication he was on. I hated seeing him like this, with no light in his eyes, indifferent to his surroundings. I was running out of hope. Hope is the only thing that can help get you through such dark days.One night I telephoned the ward to say goodnight to him, as I often did. On this occasion, which he no longer remembers, all we did was say 'I love you!' to each other again and again. It was the sweetest moment in all the misery and anger and it gave me the hope I needed.

　　(to be continued)