For Your Benefit
For Directors Only
Feed back/polls

Commentary

Time to Rethink Our Views of Mental Health

By Deborah Kendrick

My daughter is 200 miles away from home, a few months into her first semester on the lovely campus of a tiny private college, depleting my budget and, currently, triggering for me so much anxiety that I wish I had some of her drugs. That’s a joke, of course. Those of us “on the inside’ know it’s OK to joke about paraplegia or blindness or aphasia, so why shouldn’t we joke about bipolar disorder, attention deficit or other disabilities affecting spirit or mind? But just as pressure sores and detached retinas aren’t exactly high camp when left untreated, there is nothing funny about a person with depression or bipolar disorder neglecting prescribed medications.

All of us know the restraints put upon us by the misconceptions and myths surrounding physical disability. But we’re making far more progress as a society with our understanding of physical disabilities than we are with mental disabilities. When it comes to psychiatric disabilities, the learning curve for most of us is pretty steep — unless you or a family member has what so many call “issues.”

When I say I’m anxious because my daughter hasn’t sounded like herself this week, I’m not just an overprotective mom. (Well, OK, maybe I’ve been guilty of that a time or two, but this is something else.)

When you live with someone who was the victim of a traumatic encounter at a very young age, you tune in quickly to every nuance of mood and behavior.

Let me explain it this way: I have hundreds of memories of my daughter making soccer goals, building sand castles, making up songs and poems that could take your breath away, and making gifts on special occasions that looked like the work of much older hands. But I also remember her at age 12, five minutes before it was time to go to her counseling appointment, scurrying up a tree and yelling from 10 feet above my house that I couldn’t make her go. She was right.

Then, in high school, there were more serious episodes. Sometimes her depression was so profound that she couldn’t get out of bed. Other times, she exhibited the manic sense of omnipotence that seizes people with certain psychiatric conditions. And then, of course, there were the times when she wanted to hurt herself.

Hospitalizations, counseling and proper medicines have stabilized her to the point that only the very closest friends know that she’s ever had anything more serious than a wart on her left foot, medically speaking.

But I know, because I’m as tuned in to her moods as a conductor to the strings of the first chair violinist.

One psychiatrist said she has bipolar disorder. Another said she’s too young for that and calls it, instead, a mood disorder, which probably complicated matters. I like the second diagnosis better. For years, the diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been part of the medical history that follows wherever she goes. But it doesn’t matter, really, what label gets affixed to her problems. The reality is that if she’s not taking her medicine, she becomes wildly unpredictable: giddy and exuberant one day, listless and apathetic the next. At age 18, she’s an adult now, society tells me. I’m paying for college and her clothes and food, but she’s an adult. I can’t make her take her medicine, and if I called her every night at nine to remind her, teenage pride alone would prompt her to resist.

And so I worry, don’t sleep and call her periodically with questions such as, “How do you want to celebrate your birthday?” when in reality I’m just checking her mood, confirming that she is safe.

The psychiatric labels in our common vernacular reveal something about our attitudes as a society, which aren’t terribly encouraging.

If we think that people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention deficit, bipolar disorder, or a laundry list of other psychiatric disabilities are just weird or freaks or volatile creatures to be avoided, our attitudes place the burden upon them of having to fight so much harder for an equal spot at the table.

Once the medication has been neglected for a number of days, my daughter believes – rather, her disability leads her to believe – that she no longer needs it. I am only one parent worrying about one young woman, and I haven’t yet found the magic key to relinquish that responsibility to her and be confident that she will fulfill it.

But there are thousands, maybe millions, with similar situations, and no one to check the prescription, monitor the behavior and rush in for the rescue if the pendulum swings too far. If I feel anxious and uncertain that she is safe, in how much more jeopardy are those without support?

The number of veterans who are currently homeless is a national embarrassment and is predicted to continue rising. My guess is that most become homeless because of similar conditions, albeit wrought of circumstances entirely different from my daughter’s. They are shell-shocked, what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder. Many suffer depression. They have brain damage from head injuries that change thought patterns.

If we are really one connected community, we need to reach out to those with psychiatric disabilities. We need to help dispel the misconceptions and help those who are foundering seek treatment and stay on track. Medication is for one person what a wheelchair is for another. Being invisible doesn’t make it any less difficult. We can participate in bringing people with mental health disabilities into the 21^st century by really seeing them, listening to them, feeling the connection that is always there. There is a profound connection between those who have physical disabilities and those whose disabilities are of the psychiatric variety: Mind and body need one another.

Deborah Kendrick is an award-winning writer, editor, and poet. She works currently as a newspaper columnist and as senior features editor for AccessWorld.

ILUSA.Com

ABOUT US: Contact Information Editorial Team Terms Contributors Submissions

ADERTISING: Opportunities Classified Informercial' Underwriters

ARCHIVES: Archived Issues Cover Stories Features

MARKET PLACEAdvertisers Products Services Subscriptions

MISCELANEOUS: More News Links'Feedback Polls

SEARCH: Web site Internet',Donate