You’d think nothing could compare to the heartbreak endured by families whose loved ones suffer from diseases such as cancer or muscular dystrophy.
But as a recent House committee hearing on mental health made clear, the darkest and most devastating of illnesses often deal with the brain. Why? Because of the stigma, ignorance and pathetic health-care/legal policies that surround what we still call “mental illness.” Unfortunately, this phrase makes it sound as if it’s all psychological. The fact is that brain diseases are just as physical as heart diseases, diabetes or any other illness of any other organ.
Unfortunately, I know much more about the issue than I’d like. My late mother suffered from bipolar illness, transforming the best mom in the universe into someone I didn’t recognize. Brain disorders bearing the names of bipolar, depression, schizophrenia and others aren’t about emotions or having “down days” -- they are conditions that affect judgment, mood, actions, relationships, finances, employment, integrity and every other aspect of one’s makeup and human existence.
It’s about time that the powerful, affluent, advanced, wonderful nation that is America address and redress the tragic human and societal consequences of “mental health” policies that are more akin to something you’d expect out of Transylvania in the dark ages rather than from the most blessed nation on earth in the 21st century.
Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., (who sponsored the House hearing) has bravely taken her own familial experience with brain disease and is attempting to turn the tide. Her granddaughter plunged into a living hell when she developed severe bipolar disorder more than a decade ago, taking her family with her (as is often the case). This loving, courageous, unashamed grandmother struggles daily through a broken system that continues to fail the most vulnerable among us. And Rep. Myrick wants to take what she has learned about the failures of our system and help others.
According to Dr. Kay Jamison, a renowned researcher and psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins who also suffers from bipolar disorder, the cost of untreated brain diseases for America’s young is particularly staggering. Dr. Jamison testified at the hearing that at least 70 percent of the teenagers who commit suicide suffer from a potentially treatable major mood disorder. Yet “the effort to develop new treatments for severe mental illness and to prevent suicide seems remarkably unhurried,” she said:
“Every 17 minutes in America, someone commits suicide. Where is the public concern and outrage? … I cannot rid my mind of the desolation, confusion and guilt I have seen in the parents, children, friends and colleagues of those who kill themselves. Nor can I shut out the