An Open Letter to John and Tom

Dear Guys,

I'm so disappointed. I really love your movies. You both seem like such regular fellows - talented and good looking, with nice families. But then you do these interviews and talk about things that you know nothing about. When you say these things - that psychiatry doesn't help anyone and that psychotropic drugs are responsible for school shootings - from what experience are you speaking?

You see I have experience with these things. I remember holding my beautiful new baby daughter and carefully planning my walk to the next room, where the gun was, and what I would do next. I was out of my mind, of course, struggling with a hormone imbalance of biblical proportions. Tom, how can you say this was not real? I'm here to tell you that vitamins would not have helped. I've watched my son struggle without Depakote and I've watched him on it, and let me tell you that he NEEDS that drug like he needs oxygen. So John, you want to blame school shootings on this kind of drug?

I think it's easy to say what other people should do hypothetically. I've heard you say that these are your opinions and that you are entitled to them. Maybe so. But when people of your position speak, other people listen. It's the responsibility of fame. So when some ill informed mother denies her 16 year old the antidepressant that his doctor recommends because she read your interview in W magazine, and that 16 year old takes his life, will you give her comfort?

It must be nice to be healthy. It must be nice to feel right. But you don't have a clue. And knowing that you are comfortable making judgments about things that you know nothing about, makes me very uncomfortable about you. I think I'll skip your next movie, boys.
Sincerely, Trish

Read about Travolta's opinions, as thousands of others have, here.

Father's Day

This is a hard to say. My sons father is a good man. Parenting has never been easy for him - but that doesn't make him a bad parent. He tries. He has always done the right thing - paid his child support, paid his share for the braces. He does not forget birthdays. He never missed important band concerts, or little league games, or graduations. But...

I think it is extraordinarily difficult for a man to admit that there may be something wrong with his child. Perhaps it is cultural. Perhaps a man thinks of his child as an extension of himself and any perceived flaw in the child is somehow transmuted into a greater flaw in the man. If the flaw is a birthmark, or bad teeth, or short stature, well, that's bad enough. But mental illness? How does that reflect on the father? In a culture that views brain disorder as a flaw of character or a lack of will or discipline, how unthinkable is that?

My sons father has chosen the option of denial. It is easier for him to see his son as lazy or irresponsible or even incompetent than it is for him to admit that he has a mental illness. It is preferable to think that he may "snap out of it" or "finally grow up" rather than admit that he will always live with a debilitating disease. Although I can understand this way of thinking, I also see the devastating effect that this has had on my son and their relationship. Neither will ever meet the others expectations. It is a tragedy twofold.

I hope that my sons father will eventually move on to acceptance. As an ex-wife and a mother there is little I can do to intervene. They sometimes find some peace together when they go camping, escaping the everyday traumas - as if a mutual love of the natural world can bind some of their wounds. My son loves his father and expects little of him. He loves his son and expects the unattainable. I bleed for them both.

Read Families on the Brink: The Impact of Ignoring Children with Serious Mental Illness here.

F 2 F

I have just returned from one of the most profound experiences of my life. I spent three incredible days at the Tierra Learning Center outside of Leavenworth, WA, attending a teacher training for the NAMI Family to Family program. I can't believe that it has been nearly two years since I attended F 2 F with my husband, still reeling from my son's suicide attempt. That twelve weeks was life altering, as we met other family members living with mental illness and began the healing process - learning about these devastating brain disorders, medications, social services, etc. but even more - learning to communicate and deal with the aftermath of crisis.

I spent the weekend with people who have been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt. Their stories of pain and unbearable struggle were stories of survivors and that is the point. Family to Family is taught by the people who do indeed know what it's like to love and live with a relative who is profoundly ill. Through shared experience we can connect with people and help them come to terms with their lives as caregivers and help them have a deeper understanding of the debilitating effects that these diseases have on their loved ones. If taking F 2 F is an act of healing, then teaching it is an act of love.

I am deeply humbled by the experience. I am also excited that soon I will share this process of transformation with families in my own classes. I am filled with gratitude for Ron and Bruce, Judie and Nancy for sharing their knowledge and their time. I also want to thank every single one of the amazing women that shared the class with me - for their empathy and courage.

Learn more about Family to Family here.

See the beautiful Tierra Learning Center here.

Graduation

I attended my daughter's graduation today from our local community college. Although she seems a little jaded that this isn't a real (as in 4 year) degree, it was hard not to see what a tremendous accomplishment that this was for many of the students. At the very least, even for my overachiever, this is one of those passages in life that marks an expected change. The next step, if you will.

There are many people who don't find life a simple progression from point A to point B. While most of their contemporaries seem to be on cruise control down a smooth thoroughfare, for these individuals life seems like a series of missteps, wrong turns and disappointments. My father was quite the artist, and in one of his sketches he portrays himself walking sadly down a rocky road, personal rain cloud over his head, black cat crossing his path. I'm sure it seemed to him that every choice was the wrong one - that he was cursed, or jinxed or just unlucky. I suppose it's easy for me to say that he was simply depressed, some chemicals out of whack in his brain, probably a genetic condition. I'm sure that this was so, but it didn't make it any easier on him. In the end, you could say, he gave up.

I've watched my son struggle with these same demons. Never feeling good enough. Or never catching a break. I've watched his mood swings and his pain and I've lived in fear that maybe he would never be happy or even safe. We both laugh a little nervously, and make light of it, but we both always assume it's going to be the hard way. Hard on the people that love him. Much harder on him. Knowing that it's genetic - a brain disorder - a condition beyond his control - may help it to make some sense, but it doesn't change the feelings. Driving for long stretches without a cruise control is exhausting. Sometimes easy would be nice. But from this, there is no simple progression, no obvious next step. So we hope.

See ideas for coping with depression here.

The "S" Word

We had a successful suicide in our little town this week. He was 16 - a sophomore in high school. I've always been puzzled by the language - that a "failed" suicide attempt means that you get to stay alive. If this young man felt like a failure in his life, if he felt that he couldn't be successful at anything - he managed to succeed at this. And now he's gone.

My father successfully committed suicide when he was 25. In my adult examination of this, I have come to understand that it takes a powerful stimulus to override our basic survival instincts. That someone in this type of deep despair is not really trying to end their connections to their loved ones or even really to end their life - they are trying to end their pain. It is understandable that a person could be in such personal agony that any out seems reasonable - if pain, emotional or physical, was such a treat then every pharmaceutical company on earth would be bankrupt. We usually avoid pain at all costs; no one willing submits to drowning in it. I guess that explains why suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the US.

There are ALWAYS options. A patient with cancer will take drugs to ease their suffering. There are drugs to ease emotional suffering. A person with bone or muscle pain will use physical therapy, massage, and exercise to manage their problem. There are cognitive therapies, meditation, counseling and support groups to manage emotional pain. It's not always easy to see that daylight is around the corner during the darkest night of the soul. Holding someones hand until morning is always an option.

See suicide from a survivor's perspective here.

Read more about teen suicide here.

Moving Forward

Moving forward toward recovery is always our primary goal. Today we are not in crisis. Often that means a sort of vacuum. "Not in crisis" is a nowhere place, often a sort of shelf over the abyss. To get from "not in crisis" to recovery, we have to move, and movement is - well - scary. Maybe we should stay right here. Not in crisis.

I think that the trick to moving out of crisis is to make a wheel. Okay, appreciate the metaphor, movement=wheel. Now you are the hub of the wheel. Just you - Not in Crisis. To make a nice round wheel we need to have some spokes. First spoke for most of us - a mental health care professional. This can be your therapist or psychiatrist or even your MD, but you need one that you trust and you need one who can provide you with spoke #2 -medication. I mean the right medication or combo platter to help you maintain some balance in the ol' brain chemistry.

Great start! But two spokes do not a wheel make. Let's add another - family. No one on this earth can support you more than those that love you. They may need education to understand what's going on with you, but they can be your safety zone. Three spokes is still kind of flimsy so how about friends? Then think about a personal counselor, a support group, or an online community. Starting to get the picture? The more spokes you have in that wheel the stronger it's going to feel. And movement is just bound to happen.

Find more about NAMI support groups here.

Mother's Day

I probably think of myself as a mother first and foremost. It's so terribly cliche. I know that as an empowered, independent woman I have many roles, but this is the one that defines me. I was a daughter before I was a mother, I am a wife, I have been a student, and a business owner and a citizen. All the details of pregnancy, labor and delivery aside - from the moment that another person emerged from my body, I knew that nothing else would ever matter more than that. I love my children fiercely and completely. I feel their pain and their joy as if it were my own. I would do anything to protect them including, but not limited to, standing in front of on oncoming train. This is the joy and the terror that is motherhood.

When a child becomes ill, it fills a mother's heart with horror. Somehow she has failed to protect her child. She watches the child's distress with her own special agony - laced with guilt and fear. She does everything in her power to make her child well - no doctor too distant, no treatment too extreme - she would put her own blood in the child if it was necessary - her kidney, her heart. She will not rest until her child is safe and sound. But if her child suffers from mental illness, she cannot make it better. She finds herself helpless. She wonders if somehow she caused this. She failed to protect her child.

To all the mothers who may read this, take heart. You did not CAUSE this. You cannot CURE this. You have no CONTROL over this. But you will COPE. Because in the end, all we can really do for them is love them. We do that naturally and automatically. That is the joy and the terror that is motherhood.

Find a guidebook for parents with children with brain disorders here.

Remembrance

Everyone wants to be remembered. Everyone - no matter how meek or grandiose - everyone wants a legacy. Cho Seung Hui has a legacy now. He found a terrible way to be noticed. He - like so many young men before him - chose to end his life in an explosion of violence. And like so many young men before him, his explosion violently ended the lives of others. The tragic death of 33 people is, of course, not the end of the death toll at Virginia Tech. Parents, partners, and friends will die many more little deaths as this explosion of violence continues to expand - a mirror of the pain and despair of one man who wanted very much to be noticed.

We, the survivors, want very much to make sense of this. The simplest answer, the one we will reach for first because it seems so obvious, is that Cho Seung Hui was out of his mind. Crazy. A nutcase who went berserk. You will already note how the media paint him as suspicious. Now that the deed is done, many will come forward to say he was odd, he seemed twisted, they always suspected that he was nuts. More than likely this is hindsight. More than likely he was rarely noticed at all - a kid referred to as "question mark," a nuisance possibly. No one really believed he was dangerous.

The chances are very good that Cho Seung Hui did not suffer from a brain disorder. He was probably not schizophrenic, and although he was probably depressed, he was probably not a clinical depressive or bipolar. Statistically, people with mental illness are no more likely to be violent than anyone else. Unfortunately, this fact makes us, the survivors, very uncomfortable. It is much easier to dismiss this man as a lunatic, than to consider what drives a sane person to such evil. It is much easier to think him crazy, than to think that another quiet, normal kid might suddenly decide that he needs a legacy, too.

Read more on mental illness and violence here.

Special

It occurs to me that we have that tendency to concentrate on the negative effects of brain disorders and how much they disrupt out daily lives. Let us take a moment to think in another direction. My son is the person that he is, because he has bipolar disorder. He is creative, imaginative, and brilliant in ways that he doesn't always understand, because his brain doesn't work the way that mine does. In many ways, his disease is also his gift. Imagine a world without Walt Whitman or Abraham Lincoln - Amadeus Mozart or Vincent van Gogh.

As I meet people with mental illness, I find I'm drawn to them. They are such gems! It's true the diamond is often in the rough - many of these people have deep emotional scars and so much pain. But beneath their confusion and frustration these are special people with much to offer. Through no fault of their own, they are different. In our world, those that are different have much to strive against - stigma, an inability to blend in, isolation. It doesn't make for a simple life. But Buzz Aldrin was different and it got him to the moon. Viva la difference!

See a list of famous individuals with bipolar disorder here.

Support our Troops

I just read a pretty horrifying article in a magazine about a number of soldiers wounded in Iraq that came home to find themselves with a diagnosis of "personality disorder" and no disability benefits. According to the Army "personality disorder" is a pre-existing condition. I guess from the standpoint of a VA facing a backlog of 600,000 disability claims and a budget that has no way to meet these needs, "personality disorder" sounds pretty good. At least one in four vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from severe mental injury, including post traumatic stress syndrome, to say nothing of physical wounds.

I imagine that the least of these mental injuries will be depression and, what the VA euphemistically refers to as "readjustment disorders." Men are often unaware or unwilling to admit that the symptoms they are exhibiting are those of depression. Instead of seeking medical help they often seek relief with drugs or alcohol.

“I’d drink and I’d just get numb. I’d get numb to try to numb my head. I mean, we’re talking many, many beers to get to that state where you could shut your head off, but then you wake up the next day and it’s still there. Because you have to deal with it, it doesn’t just go away. It isn’t a two hour movie and then at the end it goes ‘The End’ and you press off. I mean it’s a twenty four hour a day movie and you’re thinking there is no end. It’s horrible.”

-Patrick McCathern, First Sergeant, U.S. Air Force, Retired

I hope that "supporting our troops" means more than yellow ribbons...

Read more about men and depression here.

Read the article about vets and "personality disorder" here.

Killing the ANTS

At support meeting this week we had quite a discussion about killing the ANTS. I'm talking about Automatic Negative Thoughts. It's amazing how many times our minds will take us to our least happy places - how the traffic is constantly terrible, our boss is completely unfair, we will always be unorganized, unhappy, underpaid, unappreciated. Every ANT in my mind represents a well- worn neural pathway, an expressway of nerves that automatically trigger when my life situation is stressful. Giving constant attention to these negative thoughts is the definition of depression.

It takes real effort to kill the ANTS. I must create a new neural pathway and then correct my thinking in that direction regularly until that becomes the new habit. My friends at Support had many suggestions that work for them - breaking stressful tasks into small manageable bites, giving yourself rewards for small successes, keeping a gratitude journal. I found this last one most intriguing, as it's almost impossible to be grateful and negative at the same time. I will try to remember all the things that are going right - the beating of my heart, the wonder of the sunset, chocolate! They always outnumber the ANTS.

More on depression and positive thinking here.

Challenges

After a long spell of stability, my dearest boy had a crash this weekend. My son is bipolar. A downturn is an inevitability. This is a fact of life when living with mental illness. It's a fact of life that millions of people live with every day - every day waiting for the shoe to drop. He's been stable for nearly 18 months - long enough to forget how bad it could be, I think, for him. He got a little complacent. He missed some medication. He was drinking too much. But he didn't see it coming.

I am always a little fearful that his next phone call will be a bad one (jail, hospital, loss of job,etc.) but now he has a new, sweet wife. How she will deal with this spell, or the next one, or the one after that remains to be seen. Not too long ago I told her how much I admired her courage - after all, I said, I didn't have a choice. He's my son. She told me that she didn't have a choice either, that you never choose the one that you fall in love with. The odds are very much against them. But they are so in love. Maybe love can conquer all. I will hope.

More on marriage and mental illness here.

Beginnings

I've never had any desire to start a blog. My husband blogs. My kids blog. But it didn't hold any interest for me... mainly because I could never think of anything interesting enough to go on about, and on about, and on about. I think I lead an ordinary life.

However, I have a reason to begin this blog. You see, my life has been touched by mental illness. My father committed suicide at the age of 25. My mother suffers from depression. I have an uncle with serious bipolar disorder. But most importantly, from my point of view, my son attempted suicide a little over a year ago. I knew then, as I know now, that my life would never be the same.

Let me say again that I lead an ordinary life. Many people, in point of fact, all people live with the shadow of brain disorders. A child, a partner, a parent, a co-worker - everyone knows someone who suffers from depression, bipolar disorder, OCD or schizophrenia. You may not know it, but you touch people every single day who have these disorders, just as you touch people who have diabetes, heart disease and cancer. You may not know it, but mental illness is a part of your life as well.

And so I will blog. If it means I can share some understanding, share some knowledge or some insight or just my own experience, I will blog. For all these extraordinary, ordinary people.