Meaningful treatment needed for mentally ill

To The News Observer,

For over a month now, I've been unable to take the walk down our driveway and across the street to the path leading to the lake, where our family spent so many happy hours.

Back in the late 1960s, a woman named Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote a book that some of you may have read at one of the lowest points in your life, at a time when you were doing anything and everything you could to cope with the loss of someone you love.

That book, titled "On Death and Dying," named what soon became widely known as "The five stages of grief."

The author identified them as: denial ... anger ... bargaining ... depression ... and acceptance. And she wisely pointed out that those stages are not necessarily processed in that order.

I say "wisely" because even as we grieve today for our son ... brother ... partner ... father ... we simply cannot suppress our anger. We cannot wait for some "more appropriate" time to confront an emotion that's beyond disappointment ? disappointment in an otherwise enlightened society, a culture, that continues to regard, and treat, mental illness as if it were some character defect.

Our son's bipolar condition ? disease ? was diagnosed a few years ago. As though riding shotgun, addiction quickly climbed aboard right there beside it, with sadly predictable results.

Between unsuccessful suicide attempts, our son was shuffled from one mental facility to another for "crisis stabilization." After "treatment" at each one, usually for about three days and nights, he was deemed "cured," no longer a threat to himself or others. Just like that!

Imagine the doctor tending to your aunt who has Alzheimer's telling her, "Now, you're only as forgetful as you make up your mind to be, so go on home and just pay attention."

Or an emergency room doctor telling a gunshot victim to pull himself up by his bootstraps and get back out there on the street.

But we can't leave all the blame lying outside any of those revolving doors. Our son spent a full two months in a Club Med-style treatment center in Southern California, where again he was declared "cured," given a prescription for yet another drug, and sent back out into a world expecting the mental equivalent of a broken bone to set itself, or a bleeding wound to bind and bandage itself.

And so it went, until we were left wondering why an illness every bit as real and insidious as any physical disease or injury is still shrouded in shame and secrecy ? partially diagnosed, hastily treated, and dismissed.

Insurance companies and health-care providers continue to consider mental illness and addiction as separate illnesses, despite the evidence, despite the repeated examples, despite what by now should be conventional wisdom. And so those who suffer these illnesses, who bear this double burden, are treated for one but not the other, and only rarely are they treated concurrently. This almost guarantees that the treatment will not be successful.

Together, the twin demons of mental illness and addiction sooner or later make their way into the lives of many families like mine ... and yours.

It is way past time for us to stop looking the other way, to rip away veils of secrecy, and to demand that our elected representatives make needed changes in our laws.

Insurance companies are betting that we, in our sorrow and shame, will remain anonymous, so that they may continue to decline coverage of proper care.

Well, I won't! Even in my anger, I am hopefully betting that they will lose, that families like mine will not stay silent.

I suspect that the author of that book I mentioned had one of those five stages of grief ? Acceptance ? in the right order. It's listed last. For every "what," there is a "why." And I have accepted the what: Our son is gone. Though gone from our sight, our touch, he is now forever at peace. But I cannot, will not, accept the why, and I hope you cannot, and will not, either.

As you've probably guessed, the reason I haven't been able to take that walk down to the lake is that it was the very last walk our son took ? but someday, I'll take it again.

Until then, if you feel moved to help us hope that our loss will not have been in vain, I ask that you make a donation to the National Alliance on Mental Health, GA Chapter-3180 Presidential Drive, Suite A, Atlanta, GA 30340.

Dawn McGuire

Blue Ridge