Life After Puberty
ABC TV
Australian Story
24 September 2012

The film Puberty Blues was made some thirty years ago.
Australian Story follows the life of people since their involvement in making this film.

Australian Story deals with the subject of mental illness and managing a parents mental illness within their program in a heartfelt way

A courageous Miles speaks of his life coping with his mother Jad who was an actor in the film and managing his mothers mental illness, (from the transcript of Australian Story below) Miles says..,

"MILES MUECKE, SON OF JAD CAPELJA: My dad broke up or left mum when I was two I believe. I grew up with my mum and we were living in the Cross for that whole time. For a very long time, mum’s illness was unknown. I think as sort of technology advanced mum was diagnosed with severe paranoid schizophrenia. And I think definitely a combination of marijuana and alcohol were the cause of her imbalance. Every single day brought drama. We’d be walking through Kings Cross and she’d be causing such a nuisance, having such an episode, yelling screaming about who knows what. And it was so difficult for me to see behind what was coming out of her mouth, and the fact that she was a sick person and it wasn’t her saying these things. It was hard to deal with at a young age. And yeah there were quite a lot of times I saw her get taken away in a paddy wagon which is not nice, you don’t want to see that. She’s not a criminal.

Watch the Story Here and View the Transcript at http://www.abc.net.au/austory/