My first experience of someone with mental illness was my uncle.
My earliest memory of him was when I was about five years old. I didn't understand exactly why he was so different from everyone else and why he had come back from Colorado to live with my grandmother.
He was very nice to me but sometimes he would be angry or withdrawn. Often he would sit in his room talking to himself or someone else that I couldn't see. He sometimes thought people were going to hurt him.
Paranoid schizophenia was what my mom said he had.
He served in the Navy during World War II and was in the Battle of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. An attack on the US by the Japanese that occured several months after Pearl Harbor. He witnessed close friends blown apart next to him during the battle.
After returning from the war he was very depressed. His marriage fell apart and his father died from a stoke. It was too much and he became mentally ill. In the 1950's he had electro convulsive therapy (ECT) at the VA hospital to treat his depression. But that just made him fear that people were placing wires on his bed at home and it was more stressful than help.
I remember in the late 1960's he was placed on medication and seemed to be just as normal as my other uncles. He was very happy and carried on intelligent conversations.
But he became non-compliant with taking medications and spent the remaining years of his life very isolated.
There was so much stigma attached to this illness. My Mom didn't like to talk about it. No one seemed to want to talk about it. It was just kind of a family embarrassment in the 1950s and 60s. How sad. It was heart breaking for my Mom to lose her brother this way.
We have come a long way in treatment for the mentally ill since then.
But stigma dies hard.
During the Vietnam era, some of my childhood friends who served in that war came home with alcohol problems and drug addictions. We have Vietnam vets today, who are mentally ill, living on the streets.
Today many veterans are returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with wounds of the mind.
There are high rates of suicide and PTSD in the military.
What will their quality of life be?
We need to work hard to overcome the stigma that keeps people from getting the help they need.
They deserve acceptance,help,and support to regain a life that is as healthy as it can be.
