We just finished watching a movie called “Unsane”. It was about a young lady who had inadvertently (read “entrapped”) committed herself to a private mental health facility. She signed “standard boilerplate paperwork” after a counseling session with an intake counselor. She’d been the victim of a stalker for two years previously, and had moved across country to get away from him. She found a new job and a new life. Then she’d started seeing her stalker everywhere. That’s why she went to the facility in the first place. She was just trying to get some help. In the counselling session, she’d admitted to having suicidal thoughts in her past. They were very specific thoughts about how she’d kill herself. That was how the stress of being stalked made her think, and it’d been years before. The counsellor faked her into signing the “regular paperwork” and BAM she was in for a 24 hour voluntary committal for observation. The plot thickened, of course, when she found that her stalker was working there. I’ll not ruin the movie for you (everything I’ve already told you is in the trailer and dvd description) but I can tell you that it was a decent movie. The acting was great, and the camera work reminded me of a refreshing indie film. Rent it, if you get the chance and have a couple of hours to kill.
I’m self-consciously drawn to movies, or stories, that include mental health issues. If you know my story, or part of it, you won’t be surprised. For a long time, I avoided movies such as these. The memories were too fresh, too real, and too painful to be pushed up to the forefront of my mind. I was afraid of all the things my mind would dig up if pushed to it. I’ve had a lot of experience dealing with mental health issues. I’m not sure anyone would ever make a movie of the aspects of it I’ve dealt with, however. Most good movies on the subject are, rightfully so, from the viewpoint of the person suffering from the illness. I’ve seen several of my loved ones deal with various mental problems over the past twenty-five years. The part I played was not the “locked up against my will/why doesn’t anyone help me” role, but the ” son-in-law/husband/father that just wants to do anything to help my loved one not hurt themselves and be ok” role. It doesn’t have that sexy, academy award-winning character that the previous character study tends to elicit.
When my mother in law changed from her lithium to another medication, she had a few episodes that required hospitalization. My wife, Sam, did the research and found out what we had to do to get her some help. That first time required us to drive her a few hours away to the state capitol, where the state mental hospital was, and have her committed. It was a suck ass trip. Shirley (known to the kids as MawMaw) was bipolar. I don’t know the entire history, but she’d successfully been treated with lithium for years before doctors, in their infinite wisdom, took her off of it, and replaced it with something else. The reason for the change was that lithium can substantially damage the kidneys when used over a long period of time. All I knew for sure was that Shirley wasn’t acting like Shirley any more. Her actions and moods were “erratic”. That’s a generic term for unpredictable. If that sounds vague, I’m sorry. If you haven’t experienced mental illness in any way in your life, you won’t understand. If you have, you get it.
My mother in law was a very independent woman. She had a fantastic “inner child”, mixed with a brazen honesty that you couldn’t not love. She’d irritate the hell out of me sometimes, but I always loved her. She was a great woman. When she was herself, that is. When she wasn’t, it got….interesting. Unbalanced, unpredictable and erratic behavior can start out slow, or fast. You might just catch a strange statement here and there, or the person may just do something dramatically out of character that throws up warning signs. Bipolar people have highs, and then crashes. During the highs, their activity, speech, attitude goes a million miles an hour. To someone who doesn’t know them, it may just seem that they’re super motivated individuals. They come up with fantastic ideas and push, pull and drag them, and you, till they’re in tatters. They’ll run you ragged, keep you, and themselves, up for days on end, and generally drive you to exhaustion. When they level out, they nearly always crash-hard. Depression sets in, they sleep for days, and can become suicidal. All people are different. This description is strictly my own personal observation.
I remember the night we took Shirley to the hospital. It was January 17th, 1991, the beginning of the air offensive, Desert Storm, against Iraq. I’m a big military history buff, so that stuck in my mind. Plus, while we waited at the hospital waiting room, the television showed lots of reporting on the war. I guess you can say that’s when my own little war with mental illness began, too. It really was (is?) a war, too. Small skirmishes, ambushes, full-blown battles and nuclear options included. People died.
Sam was the most intelligent, imaginative, and creative person I’d ever met. It didn’t stop her from succumbing to bipolar illness. Mental illness can affect anyone. No one is immune. She was an honor graduate, had a full scholarship to college, and had a mind that was always moving forward. I watched her give birth to our four children, home school them, and be an awesome mom, never suspecting that she would become a victim of mental illness. Slowly, it crept up upon her, day by day, manic high and depression alike. It was like “invasion of the pod people”, with me playing the unsuspecting husband while a completely alien personality overtook her. Small comments, minor indiscretions, and moodiness gave way eventually to major mood swings, deep depressions and outlandish manic highs that left me, and everyone else, reeling. The sneaky disease crept into our life and took it completely over. It was like being on a roller coaster with absolutely no safety bar. You could go flying off the rails any second, no matter what you did to try to stop it. Throw in the minor detail that you’re trying to raise four children in this atmosphere, and you understand what true fear is. We battled bipolar illness for ten years. I made plenty of mistakes. We didn’t do everything right, and I began a spiral into alcoholism to make things more complicated. A decade of psychological tornados culminated with Sam’s death. In so many ways, we lost that battle.
My own father was susceptible to mental illness. Bad mood swings, flashes of anger, and narcissistic tendencies were not uncommon growing up with him. Wayne Stone was a great provider, an incredible dad, and the man everybody liked. It wasn’t obvious that he would have benefited greatly from antidepressants in his early years. In the last ten years of his life, unbeknownst to me, he’d begun taking them. My mother attested to the difference in his behavior and how much better he was able to cope emotionally. My father was the strongest man I’ve ever known, but it didn’t stop mental illness from making his life less than what it could’ve been.
My daughter, Candice has struggled with many issues over her lifetime. Growing up in our house could be stressful, to say the least. Having a parent with mental illness cast a pall over her life. Another parent with a drinking problem added fuel to the flame. She found drugs, especially weed, as a comfort zone to escape into. It got worse when we moved to Tennessee. Her life has spun almost continuously out of control. Children of mentally ill parents have a heavy fear of falling to the same demon. Through all of my daughter’s problems and indiscretions, there is the question of whether or not her greatest fear is being realized. Time will tell.
There are times in my life when I was ready to quit, to give up on life. The normal pressures of providing for a family are hard enough. When you’re dealing with the constant stress of a loved one’s mental disorder, stress can overwhelm you. I broke down. I gave up many times, and it only hurt my life, never helped. I quit. I gave up on myself and those that loved me. I drank to forget my problems, in the beginning. Then I drank because I preferred it to being sober. Then I drank because I found I couldn’t stop. It took three DUIs and over ninety days, total, in jail to take me to a six month, twelve step based program. It saved my marriage. It saved my family. It saved my life. One could argue that alcoholism is a mental illness. Others believe it is merely a choice: drink or don’t drink. I believe both are true, simultaneously. My diagnosis may not be clinical, but the evidence of my symptoms pointed directly at the truth of the disease. It doesn’t take away my responsibility for my horrible choices, however. We all must bear our own burdens.
Mental illness is slowly coming out of the shadows. I’m not sure if it’s because more people are being diagnosed with a wide variety of mental diseases, or that there are so many pharmaceutical companies pumping out pills for them that sell like hotcakes. Maybe a lot of both. The spotlight that is now shedding light upon mental illness is slowly turning what used to be a social stigma into something more of an acceptable illness. People don’t have to hide what’s going on inside. They can get help without becoming a pariah to their friends and family. Likewise, family members are less likely to make excuses for their loved ones symptoms and behavior. We’re still a long way from it becoming just another medical condition, but the world is changing.
A final word to that family member that is dealing with mental illness from the outside. Seek help for your loved one, and for yourself. Don’t hide erratic behavior with excuses. Open up to doctors, social workers and therapists. All the way. Don’t let fear, shame and the stigma of the disease make you freeze in the road like a opposum in the headlights. Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed with sole responsibility. Reach out to family and professionals and make use of all the resources that you can get your hands on. A simple pill won’t solve the problem. Medications can be amazing and effective, but they can’t take the place of a loving support system that will do anything to get their loved one to a place where life is better. I cannot promise that it won’t be hard. I cannot promise that all will end well. I can promise that there is hope. You have a wide array of options, medications, treatments and assistance today. Use ALL of them. Most of all, and I can’t emphasize this enough. Never. Give. Up. Thank you, dear reader, for your time.
K.S.
Rolling Stones 
I love you, little brother.
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