đ§ Listen to Sarah read this installment of Cured.
They say not to rely on one person for all your mental and emotional needs. Iâm not sure who âtheyâ are, but theyâre probably right. Itâs doubly true for people with mental illnessâor at least it was for me.
My mother opens the front door to her apartment and steps back. We donât hugânot out of anger. Itâs as if weâre not sure how. I take off my coat and hang it in the closet.
Since I moved out of her apartment, where I lived for five years because I was unable to live on my own, sliding into and climbing out of psychiatric crises, sheâs needed time to heal. I relied on her to be my caretaker, friend, mother, physician, therapist, and medication consultant. It was too much. My brokenness broke herâa bit.
My bag bumps against my hip as I follow her into the living room. She sits on the blue couch, where we sat so many times, her rubbing my back, trying to calm me. I put my bag on the floor and sit on the white, stiff-backed chair. Sheâs dressed in slacks and a blazer, her black curly hair set, but her eyes still have that fragile, grey look about them.
This visit is my idea. I suggested I come over and work at the dining room table for the afternoon. The room where I once slept is back to being my motherâs study, but it wouldnât feel right to be in there again so soon.
She says something about her book club, but I have trouble paying attention. The pit in my stomach expands. I want her to be better. I want everything to hurry up and be okayâme, her, all of this.
I pull my laptop out of my bag. âThis is greatâworking here. Thank you.â
She stands. âIâll leave you to it.â
I think about revealing to her that Iâm recovering from mental illness (bipolar disorder, technically, but Iâve had so many diagnoses, who knows which was the right label to put on my mental and emotional dysfunction) and she doesnât have to worry anymore. But I donât know how to explain this or prove it. During the twenty-five years I was in the mental health system yet relying on her for support, no one presented recovery to us as an option. I had this diagnosis or that one and always would and that was that.
After fifteen minutes at the dining room table, trying to grade my studentsâ midterm essays, my mother walks to the closet and opens the door.
âAre you leaving?â I ask.
âBook club.â
Right. She must have thought I wanted to work here in the apartment, not here with her. I get up and go to the door.
She smiles weakly, shouldering her coat.
Iâm heavy with guilt for the stress I caused her. She spent countless nights on suicide watch, which is too much to ask of anyone, countless hours in the emergency room, countless hours trying to help me through psychiatric crises.
When sheâs gone, a crushing loneliness weighs on my chest. I think itâs loneliness. Or maybe grief. Or sadness.
Hurriedly, I pack my things, get my coat, count to two hundred to be sure she wonât see me, and lock the door behind me. My thoughts race: Iâm alone, weâll never be the same.
At home in my apartment, I fill my espresso maker and light the stove. A pessimist might say the visit was a disaster, confirmation that weâll never be as close as we once were. An optimist would say it was a step in the right direction.
*
Improving how and where people in psychiatric crises receive care and supporting families and caregivers is one of the tenets of the contemporary Recovery Movement. Itâs due in part to what some consider the worst policy change in the history of mental health care in the United States: deinstitutionalization.
By the 1960s, the U.S. government had finally admitted that most psychiatric institutions offered inhumane treatment. The buildings, many a century old, were dilapidated and falling apart. Patients were abused and neglected, left sitting in feces, subjected to ice baths, given lobotomies, forcibly sterilized, put in straitjackets, and overmedicated. Patients had been hospitalized either voluntarily, which meant a total loss of individual rights, or involuntarily, which meant a total loss of individual rights. Some patients went to what they thought were hospitals in the help-you-recover sense of the word and instead of getting help, found themselves in locked wards; put in isolation, sometimes for years; and without any rights or recourse for release.
President John F. Kennedy and others theorized that the way to fix our dismal mental health care system was to close the institutions and establish community centers where people could receive care. Deinstitutionalization would âfreeâ patients. Community centers and new psychotropic medications would fill the role institutions were supposed to have played. Psychiatric facilities were closed; the number of Americans receiving treatment in mental hospitals dropped by 70 percent.
To read or listen to the complete Cured, choose the discounted annual subscription for $30âabout the price of a hardcover book. Each purchase brings awareness to mental health recovery.
You can also gift âCuredâ to someone in need.