Mental Health Awareness Month: When a Loved One Needs Help, You Need Help, Too

Photo courtesy of Joseph Frank on Unsplash

May is Correct Your Posture Month. It's National Asparagus Month and National Egg Month and American Cheese Month, so you can honor them all by sitting up straight while enjoying a mouthful of quiche.

May is also Mental Health Awareness Month, which is good timing. The trauma of the past year might take decades to overcome. According to a February 2021 report, 40% of Americans had symptoms of anxiety or depressive disorders. The Commonwealth Fund reported last year that Black and Latino Americans were nearly one-third more likely than whites to be experiencing mental health problems, while low-income Americans were nearly twice as likely as the wealthy.

One hundred percent of those of us who love and care for someone with a mental illness are being affected by it as well.

Six years ago, I spent a summer couch-surfing, freaked out and exhausted from the stress of my wife's then-undiagnosed mood disorder . . . Read the rest in the Minneapolis StarTribune

A Day in the Life

Here is the state of depression in the Upper Midwest: I play Beatles’ songs on the piano and go ice skating and some nights my wife Leah is in bed 12, 14 hours. Hell, if I took the meds she’s on I would sleep until August. Yesterday she woke up and ate cereal and then mid-morning went back to our bedroom and a couple hours later took a shower. She might have gone back to bed after that. I don’t keep track.

At one point I asked her if she’d been sleeping.

No, she said. I was resting.

In the afternoon she had her semimonthly call with her psychiatrist. I was there with her. That’s the deal, for both our sakes. Her med changes are convoluted this winter, like watching Julia Child cook a stew. Add a little of this. Try a little of that. Maybe some of this. Maybe less of that. That’s what my wife’s meds changes are like. …

Read more on Medium.com

What We Caregivers Talk About When We Talk About Self-Care

I do my best brooding in the shower, especially on a cold October day like today, gray as cinder, an all-day rain-snow-sleet sludge pelting the doomed snapdragons in my wife’s garden, and there’s Minnesota in 2020 for you in one snapshot.

I sound like a sourpuss, because who isn’t one these days. But I’ve got hope. My wife’s late-onset bipolar disorder has stabilized, thanks to good fortune, great docs, and the right meds. A few summers ago, though, I nearly lost my own mind during her initial rageful manic episode, a couple years before I nearly lost her altogether from her suicide attempt during her second severe depression.

I brooded about that today, about the pain of a loved one’s invisible illness. About an AARP report this month suggesting two thirds of the adult population in the United States is suffering social isolation and anxiety during the pandemic. About how millions of people are trapped in their own homes and in their own minds, closed off to the help they need. How most people, especially these stoic Midwesterners I shovel snow alongside, would rather wallow in silence over a hot bowl of mush than tell anyone what a desperate hole they’re sinking in.

Well, when the stress of caregiving for a woman with eyes popping out of her head got to me, I, for one, fessed up. I needed help and found it. . . .

Read more at Medium.com.

I Know You Have a Mental Illness. But I Am Only Human

I get it. I do understand.

Each day is a struggle for you to get out of bed, let alone wash the dishes or do the laundry. It’s been two years since you cooked a meal or drove the kids to school or danced with me or held me during the night.

You are consumed by depression.

You hate feeling this way. You hate being stuck on the couch. You hate not going outside. You hate how none of your treatments have helped. You hate how much weight you’ve gained from the meds, how no one calls you, how shitty you feel, how much guilt you feel for how little you can give to our marriage.

You are smothered by the central paradox: To get better you must get out of bed, but to get out bed you must get better.

The central paradox: To get better you must get out of bed, but to get out of bed you must get better.

You didn’t ask to be depressed. It’s not your fault.

So I do everything. I help the kids with their homework. I take them to soccer. I sign the permission slips and I pay the bills. I cook the meals and clean up the kitchen and take out the garbage. I drive you to your appointments. I work and I work and I encourage you and I pray for you and never judge you and read about new therapies. I battle the stigma and cling to the hope that someday you will get better because without hope you and I and our family are doomed.

But, honey, I am only human. . . .

Read more at Medium.com.

How Al-Anon’s Three C’s Helped Me Navigate My Wife’s Bipolar Disorder

The best reminder I ever heard with regard to loving my wife who’s living with bipolar disorder came from a pal of mine I call Jack Lemmon.

“In Al-Anon,” Jack Lemmon said, “they talk about the Three C’s: I didn’t cause my wife’s drinking, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it.”

The real Jack Lemmon was an actor you might have seen in a few thousand old movies. In Some Like It Hot, he was the bass player dressed in drag swooning over Marilyn Monroe. In the Odd Couple he played the uptight divorcee Felix Unger; in Missing, the distraught Christian Scientist father of a kidnapping victim in Chile; and in Glengarry Glen Ross, Shelley Levene, the washed-up real estate salesman.

I met my Jack Lemmon not at an Al-Anon meeting but in a support group for spouses and partners of those living with a mental illness. . . .

Read more at Medium.com.

Surprising Intimacy and Hope in a Zoom-Based Support Group Meeting

(Originally posted May 18, 2020, on Medium.com)

I’ve been attending a pair of NAMI support groups for five years now, ever since my marriage was walloped by my wife’s late-onset bipolar disorder. After four hospitalizations she’s doing well these days, and so am I, and our story gives hope to the other spouses and partners in my two groups.

Long ago, in the pre-Covid-19 days, we met in church classrooms, where ten or so of us attendees would spill our latest stories. Whose partner stayed in bed all month. Whose husband attempted suicide. Who found reason for hope. Who was falling apart amidst the madness and guilt and was desperate for support.

Now, instead of a church, we videocast via Zoom from our dens and basements and attics. And I’m surprised how well it’s worked out. . . .

Read more at Medium.com.

Principal DeVos’s Welcome Back Letter to Parents of John C. Calhoun Middle School Students

Hello, John C. Calhoun Middle School community! I’m looking forward to hearing all about your children’s fun this summer. Unfortunately, Dick and I couldn’t make it to Zermatt, but we had a lovely stay-cation at our little cottage.

I’ll bet some of you are wondering about school this year. Your children’s safety is our Number One priority. Here is a list of changes you might notice.

1. We have decided to increase our active shooter drills to four per month. For those teachers still refuse to carry firearms to protect their students, the National Guard stationed inside the school will be fully armed with the latest hi-tech weaponry. (Thank you to the PTA for raising money for the amazing MREs.)

2. As for this Covid-19 business, Superintendent Kushner and I will be instituting the following policies:

• Our Number One priority is children returning to the classroom. Rest assured, nothing in the data suggests being in school is in any way dangerous.

• In response to the mayhem caused by the antifas, Mr. Pence from the district office is instituting a new curriculum called “Advancing God’s Kingdom.” Learn about the exciting details here.

• The ability to choose what you think is best for your child remains our Number One priority. Therefore, parents who do not want to send their children to JCCMS may apply for a voucher to send their children to a local parochial school of their choice.

• Finally, if there are little flare-ups or hot spots, that can be dealt with on a classroom-by-classroom or a case-by-case basis. If it is determined that your child’s classroom monitor (e.g., teacher, custodian, unemployed Nordstrom’s sales clerk, etc.) is unable to fulfill his/her duties, we are planning to hire security personnel from Blackwater to keep order in your child’s classroom.

I want to thank our staff, especially Mr. Berman and Mr. Vindman, for their valuable input. We were sorry to hear about Mr. Berman’s decision to pursue other interests. Mr. Vindman disappeared a month ago and is in our thoughts and prayers.

I look forward to giving each child a warm John C. Calhoun hug on the first day of school. Onward, Crusaders!

Sincerely,

Principal DeVos

Four Things I Wish I Knew During My Wife's First Stay on the Psych Ward

Leah is safe now. We need you to come down here to the county hospital.”

We had been married for 30 years. After months of her mania-fueled downpour of “creative energy” and rage, Leah disappeared one Tuesday morning in September 2015. She had been emailing me and texting me sometimes dozens of times a day, and haranguing me ceaselessly for months.

Around dinner time, when the nurse in the psychiatric ER called me, I was relieved — and thrust into on-the-job training for a role I’d never planned to undertake.

Here are four things — among many others — I wish I knew at the time. Read more at Medium.com.

You Want Me to “Be Supportive,” But Help Me Know What That Means

Honey? I love you.

I’ve noticed that without your meds you’ve been a lot more irritable toward the kids and me and you’re not sleeping well. You say you won’t take your medications because of the side effects. You’ve also said it’s none of my business if you take your meds and that I should be more supportive of you.

What can I do or say to be more supportive when you’re not doing what your doctor says? Read more at Medium.com.

No, Your Depressed Partner Can’t Put Her Stupid Dishes in the Stupid Dishwasher

Never mind having to always mow the lawn or shovel the snow or walk the dog.

The most common complaint I hear from those living with those living with major depression is that their partners can’t put their stupid dirty dishes in the stupid dishwasher.

“I’m not asking him to load the whole dishwasher,” my support group friend Henry has moaned a dozen times. “Not even load his whole place setting. All I’m asking is that he start with one fork, for God’s sake.” Read more at Medium.com.