Mental Health Awareness Month

About half an hour north of my hometown, Mobile, Alabama, is the small rural community of Mt. Vernon. For nearly 100 years, Mt. Vernon was home to a place whose name alone could strike fear into folks from Lower Alabama: It was a place called Searcy Hospital.

Searcy Hospital was an imposing structure: Built in 1828 as an arsenal, just after 1900, it was repurposed into what then was a hospital for the insane. Patients who exhibited behaviors that were deemed out of the norm and not understood by others were likely to be sent to Searcy, where it seemed that for the most part, patients lived out all of their days; no one seemed to know anyone who had ever been released from Searcy after being admitted. The poor, the uneducated and the isolated—those who had no advocates—were most vulnerable to being committed to Searcy. And when Searcy closed its doors years ago, hundreds of graves—many, unidentified—were discovered in Searcy’s cemetery, bearing witness to patients who entered a place where they were cut off from loved ones, work and everything in their community, never to leave.

My mother grew up not far from Mt. Vernon, Alabama and Searcy Hospital. And, according to family members, she first began displaying signs of mental illness as a young person. It’s clearly my good fortune that our family members had a fear of Searcy Hospital: Had my mother been sent there, she likely would never have been released, and I would never have been born.

But, my mother’s illness did indeed have the effect of cutting her off from family, neighbors, church, coworkers—and pretty much anyone who observed her during one of her “episodes.” My earliest recollection of my mother’s struggle with mental illness came when I was quite young. We were shopping at Gayfer’s, one of my mother’s favorite department stores, when suddenly, she had collapsed in front of a display of dresses, screaming and flailing as if something or someone were attacking her. Ladies who were in the store came quickly to see what was happening, and I remember someone’s hands gently pulling me back.

We exercise some caution around childhood memories—and had I never seen my mother again having that kind of “episode,” I’d be much more concerned about the reliability of the memory. But my mother’s “episodes” would be on full public display throughout my childhood and teen years: Retail establishments seemed to offer the kind of overstimulation that triggered the events. In a grocery store one afternoon, she fell to the floor, screaming catatonically, as I tried to reassure the folks who quickly began gathering around us that she would be alright in a minute. I wasn’t at all sure of that, but I needed her to be alright, to be able to drive us home, to get out of the environment that was causing her so much stress. She never mentioned any of the episodes, leaving me wondering whether she was even cognizant of them after the fact. And, miraculously, no one ever phoned the police. [In our current environment, too often, police who are not equipped to handle mental health crises respond with deadly force toward a person who may well be unable to perceive that s/he is a threat.]

Between the “episodes,” there was constant paranoia—that someone had come into our house, poisoned food, or taken something that she’d “put away.” She didn’t want anyone to touch her—a rather difficult feat in the South where everyone shakes hands or exchanges hugs in greeting. Her paranoia left her reclusive and estranged, and cost her the teaching vocation which she seemed truly to have loved.

Until nearly the end of her life, my mother’s illness had no name, because her paranoia wouldn’t allow her to visit a physician; she’d not seen a doctor since she was hospitalized for my birth [and, until college, I could count the few doctor’s visits she’d allowed me for anything other than vaccinations]. At age 90, her paranoia had left her refusing most foods she had always eaten: no chicken or eggs (bird flu…), no fish or seafood (mercury…), no beef (mad cow disease…), not even vegetables (pesticides…). Always a very small woman, the refusal to eat even for a short time meant that she lost weight. And when she hit a stretch of a few days in the Mobile heat during which she refused to drink water—tap or bottled (“It’s not clean.”)—she did end up hospitalized, weighing a scant 80 pounds. Only after she physically attacked two doctors and a nurse was I able to insist that the ICU staff call for a psychological consultation.

And, only after the hospital psychiatrist had examined her for an entire morning was her illness given a name: schizophrenia. By that point, I was an employee benefits attorney, well acquainted with these kinds of diagnoses from health care work. But I’d never been able to objectively step back to look at the situation to ask myself any questions; I was too much a part of what was happening.

The diagnosis gave me an explanation for the illness which had held my mother prisoner.

The diagnosis also gave me the gift of knowing that the dysfunction that had ruled in our household was never about me. It was about her illness. My father had succumbed to alcoholism to cope with the dysfunction. Mercifully, I’d begun therapy with a wonderful Episcopal priest (and father of a college classmate) who helped me make sense of my own place in the dysfunction many years before my mother’s illness had a name—and helped me understand, as well, that I am, as we all are, loved by our God.

We didn’t know—so many years ago when my mother first began displaying signs of mental illness—what we know now. We didn’t know then about ways that the quality of a person’s life could be so greatly improved.

We know more now. Mental illness need not cut us off from family and from community.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time we intentionally set aside to focus on dismantling the stigma surrounding mental illness, because we do know more now. We know now that there are therapists who can help. We know now that medications are available. We know now that support groups can help us find community.

But we need to end the silence. We need to dismantle the stigma. Mental illness is illness. We need to focus on healing, remembering that Jesus encountered persons who struggled with illness of body, mind and spirit—and who left their encounters with Jesus having been healed. God wants healing for God’s people.

If you are struggling, or if a loved one is struggling, there is help. First, if you are covered under any medical plan, check your plan information to determine what mental health care coverage is available under that plan, as well as network therapists and support groups, and utilize those resources. Check with faith-based counseling groups, too, for potential therapists. If sufficient resources are available in the community, take the time to interview therapists, to help identify persons with whom you can relate well.

Then, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has resources available for adults who are themselves struggling with mental illness, and family members whose loved ones are struggling with mental illness. NAMI’s helpline (1-800-950-NAMI (6264)) can help connect callers with a variety of resources.

Lastly here, if you or a loved one experience suicidal ideations, call or text 988 for the National Institute of Mental Health’s Suicide Hotline, or dial 911 in an emergency. (Please be certain to alert dispatchers that there is a mental health crisis if calling 911)

No one is alone. There is support. Please don’t allow your or a loved one’s unaddressed mental health issues to cut you off from fully experiencing God’s grace and goodness.