Written by Sharon Crousore
OUR DAUGHTER LOST HER MIND. Others lose their sight or hearing or ability to walk. What trauma and challenge that is.
Invocation
Let us give thanks to the God and heavenly Parent of our Savior Jesus Christ from whom all help comes! God helps us in all our troubles, so that we are able to help others who have all kinds of troubles, using the same help that we ourselves have received from God. Just as we have a share in Christ’s many sufferings, so also through Christ we share in God’s great help and we are given the strength to endure with patience. So our hope in God is never shaken, we know that just as God shares in our sufferings, others may also share in the help we have received. (Adapted from 2 Corinthians 1:2-7.)
MICAH 6:8
OUR DAUGHTER LOST HER MIND. Others lose their sight or hearing or ability to walk. What trauma and challenge that is.
For Amy, just as she was finishing a wonderful junior year in college, in the midst of applying to graduate school and anticipating her career and the rest of her life, while being active in her church, being a very independent and hardworking young woman, the loss was of her mind.
Seven a.m. in the practice room in the music building. She couldn’t seem to memorize one particular measure of a Beethoven sonata that otherwise was totally memorized. Eight a.m. The classroom becomes blindingly bright, then fades back to normal. The walls begin closing in, then receding far away, then closing in again.
Noon: Sounds of the campus, the carillon, dorm noises, conversations a block away on the quad, all are amplified like a Rolling Stones concert.
Nine p.m. Home at last, but the little pumpkin candle on the end table suddenly comes alive, mocks her, taunting her, threatens her.
The next day O.K. Everything normal.
A couple of days later: She can’t leave her apartment because everything out there is gone. Only her apartment continues to exist. Everything else is a desert, and if she stepped outside, she would sink into the sand and cease to be. She is losing her ability to remember the steps of taking a shower, of getting dressed, how to wash the dishes or prepare a meal.
Two days later, she goes to the campus medical clinic and is told she is suffering from “stress:” Never mind that she is having a great semester. Even though, by then, she is having auditory, olfactory, tactile, and intense visual hallucinations. She protests that diagnosis. She keeps telling the clinic counselors that something was wrong with her brain, but no one would listen. Rather, she is told that this was a psychological problem and that she needed to work through these problems by herself. She was not to tell her family or to seek their assistance while she went to “counseling:”
It is a year of hell. After two hospitalizations, she defies what her doctor was telling her to do and confides in her father what was happening to her and what her symptoms were. He recognized immediately that this was a medical emergency. Now that her father and I are involved, we seek other medical advice and treatment as a family rallying around one member who is ill. She is finally believed and diagnosed with schizophrenia, which we find out, is a very common brain illness. Her illness is and remains devastating. The pain of the illness, the side effects of medication, the misinformation, the jokes, the shunning by friends and coworkers, the horror of losing one’s ability to think, facing night after night of vivid nightmares seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling the horrors, and the lifetime of struggle just to survive in the poverty enforced by our society are all an exhausting challenge to even the strongest Christian.
Out of the depths I cry to you, O’ Lord. I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope. -Psalm 130:1, 5
But she has survived. And she has lived her faith. Every day, no matter how ill, she has done something kind or helpful for someone else. She constantly struggles to make ends meet, but she shares. She works to educate people on the signs of schizophrenia and the importance of getting good medical care as early in the course of the disease as possible. She freely talks about her illness to help others cope with the terrible stigma in our society. She tries to educate the media, our legislators, and our churches.
And so do her father and I. Our God gives us hope. The Holy Scriptures say “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).
We, too, try to do justice-we speak up when people laugh about schizophrenia, when they make jokes about “schizos;” tranquilizers, Prozac, “nut cases,” when they assume that all persons with schizophrenia are dangerous when, in fact, persons with schizophrenia are far more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violence. We educate where we can, and we strive for justice for others with this and similar illnesses by joining with others in the Mental Illness Network UCC to make our own denomination a more caring community and by doing as much legislative advocacy as time allows.
We will walk the journey with our daughter as long as we are alive and, in doing so, we walk humbly with our God.
What will you do? One in one hundred young people will be struck with this disease. Will our churches abandon them and their families? Some will already be married. How will you treat their spouses? Some will have children. Will their parent’s illness be a shameful subject that is whispered about in the aisles and kitchen at your church? “What does the Lord require of you?”
Schizophrenia is an equal opportunity disease striking young men and women alike, rich or poor, of all intelligence levels. There is no way to prevent it and no way of knowing who will be struck. But there are new medications and supportive therapies that help.
And we can help people in our congregations cope with schizophrenia’s initial onslaught and the following lifetime of care. We have an opportunity to do justice, to be merciful, and to walk humbly with our God by walking with those whom God loves.
Reflections and Questions
1. Have you known anyone with schizophrenia?
2. What was their illness like?
3. Are they receiving the new medications that have been invented in the last eight years?
4. Does God care about the people who are struck with schizophrenia and their families?
5. Does God care about persons with the other brain illnesses like bipolar disorder, panic disorder, clinical depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder?
6. Could you do just one of these things to respond to God’s word to do justice and love mercy?
Learn about schizophrenia, how to recognize its symptoms, and where to find appropriate and competent help in your community.
Participate in a community effort that provides care for persons with mental illness.
Learn about and help to improve laws and governmental services for those with mental illnesses.
Educate your congregation, your community, and the media representatives in your community about appropriate language to use when describing a person with a mental illness.
Find a family in your church or neighborhood who has a family member with a mental illness and offer to help with emotional or practical support.
Contact Persons and Organizations
The Mental Illness Network of the United Church of Christ; c/o Bob Dell; 414 E. Pleasant Ave.; Sandwich, Illinois 60548; 815.786.6341;
Pathways to Promise: Interfaith Ministries and Prolonged Mental Illnesses; 5400 Arsenal St.; St. Louis, Missouri 63139;
The Rev. Margaret (Peg) M. Slater; Coordinator for Inclusive Ministry; Parish Life and Leadership Ministry Team, Local Church Ministries; United Church of Christ; 700 Prospect Ave. E.; Cleveland, Ohio 44115-1100; 216.736.3838; < slatermCucc.org>.
NAMI (National Alliance for the Mentally Ill); 200 N. Glebe Rd.; Suite 1015; Arlington, Virginia 22203-3754; 703.524.7600; NAMI Helpline at 800.950.6264 (answered from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. EST Monday through Friday); or
National Depressive and Manic-Depressive Association; 800.826.3632;
Suggested Hymn
“O God in Whom All Life Begins” 401 TNCH
Resources
Ross, Jerilyn. Triumph over Fear: A Book of Help and Hope for People with Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and Phobias. New York: Bantam Books, 1994.
Gold, Mark S., with Lois B. Morris. The Good News about Depression: Cures and Treatments in the New Age of Psychiatry. New York: Villard Books, 1987.
Kernodle, William D. Panic Disorder: The Medical Point of View: There Is No Need to Suffer. Richmond, Va.: Cadmus, 1995.
Klein, Donald F., and Paul H. Wender. Understanding Depression: A Complete Guide to Its Diagnosis and Treatment. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Peschel, Enid et al., ed. Neurobiological Disorders in Children and Adolescents. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992.
Shifrin, Jennifer. Pathways to Understanding: A Manual on Ministry and Mental Illness. Pathways to Promise; 5400 Arsenal St.; St. Louis, Missouri 63139; phone: 314.644.8400.
Torrey, E. Fuller. Surviving Schizophrenia: A Manual for Families, Consumers, and Providers. 3rd ed. New York:
HarperPerennial, 1995.
Turkington, Carol, and Eliot F. Kaplan. Making the Prozac Decision: A Guide to Antidepressants. Los Angeles: Lowell House, 1997.
Woolis, Rebecca. When Someone You Love Has a Mental Illness: A Handbook for Family, Friends, and Caregivers. New York: J. P Tarcher/Perigree, 1992.
WE102
Designed and printed by United Church Resources, Local Church Ministries
Women’s Mosaic Series 2002
UCC Women’s Resource
Margaret (Peg) Slater, Editor