Living with Mental Illness: You Are Not Alone

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Created on Sunday, 20 February 2011 00:00
Written by Margie King Saphier

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I often wondered when I would give this sermon. The question was not IF I would give it, but WHEN. About 14 years ago I took a bereavement course titled “All of My Losses, All of My Griefs.” When I was taking that course, it had been over 30 years since my father had committed suicide when he was sixty and I was 23 years of age. It is now over 40 years. For one of my assignments, I wrote a memorial tribute to my father and shared it with my two sisters and mother. One of my sisters sent it to her son-in-law, whose 21-year old sister had committed suicide. He called me to tell me my words were helpful and asked if he could send it on to friend who also had a loved one who committed suicide, and I gave my permission. My tribute to my father was passed on to others, some from whom I heard.

I’m always surprised by how many people have lost a loved through suicide. Although I shouldn’t be surprised - suicide ranks as the 11th cause of all deaths; the fifth leading cause for 15 to 24 year olds, and a leading cause for those 65 and over. Many of you here have a sister or brother, a child, a spouse, a parent or friend who have committed suicide, but most of us don’t talk about it. This is why I am surprised; because silence makes it seem rare, when in actuality, it is not. In the recent past the town of Concord had three of their young people commit suicide over an eighteen-month period. It was their deaths that said to me, “It’s time.”

Although I will be talking about suicide, I also need to stress that 15 million Americans suffer from major or clinical depression in a year. 80 to 90% can be effectively treated and can return to their normal activities and feelings.

Today’s sermon is my personal reflection on clinical depression and suicide. I have no pat answers, and I need to stress that what I say comes from my experience, which may or may not reflect your experiences, but the primary message I want to get across is that you are not alone – whether you suffer from clinical depression or a another form of mental illness or if you have a loved who suffers from one or a combination of illnesses – please know you are not alone.

When my father committed suicide, friends and mere acquaintances shared their stories about their loved ones who also committed suicide. As time wore on I realized that because of shame most families don’t openly share the suicide of a loved one, except to another who has had the same experience. This is also true of mental illness, whether it is clinical depression, a diagnosis of bi-polar, schizophrenia, I could go on – the list is lengthy. Even though society is far more enlightened than in the past, mental illness and suicide still evoke shame.

Historically the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have taught that suicide is a willful sin against God. These teachings led to ostracizing the one with mental illness. I am convinced that religion’s blaming the one who commits suicide was a way of distancing ourselves, a way of wrapping ourselves in a protective cocoon claiming they were “the other” and they were certainly “less than” we who chose to live – as if this is an objective, willful choice for the one who is ill.

Certainly the care of the mentally ill has historically, as well as to the present day, reflected this attitude of “them” not being worthy by committing patients to abysmal insane asylums as they were called in previous centuries to the present day lack of adequate care facilities and lack of adequate health care insurance for mental illness. This tragedy is reflected in the fact that many of our homeless and prisoners are mentally ill.

Recently a friend emailed saying her daughter-in-law was diagnosed as bi-polar. My friend had gone to stay with her son so she could help care for the grandchildren while her daughter-in-law was in the hospital. The experience of witnessing her daughter’s-in-law bizarre behavior and then seeing her daughter-in-law return to normal after her psychiatric medications took effect caused my friend to ask the essential existential questions of life. Her email asked:

“After watching her become totally different personalities, I wonder ‘Who are we?’ Are we our DNA, or the chemicals in our brain? Do we have any free will? Are we "up" because we choose to be or because the Dopamine is high in our brain? How did this happen? Is it nurture or nature or both?” These questions challenge our sense of who we are, the meaning of life – and of my life, and asks what is free-will any way?’

These are the questions religions try to answer.

Mental illness can also evoke questions and self-doubt about our relationship with the one who is ill and with our self. We often ask ourselves is this the depression or mental illness speaking or is this my loved one speaking? Because mental illness takes place in the environment in which one lives, what is said is often said in the context of one’s relationships. What is said can be pretty irrational; but because there can be an element of truth, it is not always clear who is speaking – the persona who is ill or the persona who is well or a combination of the two. It takes time to sort these things out, and it is why a support group is so important to help one navigate.

Two weeks ago Gary gave a sermon on faith without certainty. Living with mental illness, whether you are the one with the illness or the loved one of someone suffering from mental illness, brings the meaning of faith without certainty into bold relief. Your world, your assumptions can become a big unsettling question mark.

This was true for me. My father’s illness and death turned my world upside down. Ultimately it was the words of William Styron in his small but powerful book, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, which helped me to understand the pain and suffering my father endured until he died. Styron writes, “Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self - to the mediating intellect - as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode, …” (p.7) I want to stress those last words: “It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it …”

Later in the book Styron recounts the public response to the suicide of Primo Levi. He writes:

“This general unawareness of what depression is really like was apparent most recently in the matter of Primo Levi, the remarkable Italian writer and survivor of Auschwitz who, at the age of seventy-seven, hurled himself down a stairwell in Turin in 1987. Since my own involvement with the illness, I had been more than ordinarily interested in Levi’s death, and so, late in 1988, when I read an account in the New York Times about a symposium on the writer and his work at New York University, I was fascinated, and finally appalled. For according to the article, so many of the participants, worldly writers and scholars, seemed mystified and disappointed by Levi’s suicide. It was as if this man whom they had all so greatly admired, and who had endured so much at the hands of the Nazis – a man of exemplary resilience and courage – had by his suicide demonstrated a frailty, a crumbling of character they were loath to accept. In the face of a terrible absolute - self-destruction – their reaction was helplessness and a touch of shame.”

Styron was horrified by the reactions of the erudite scholars and writers because he realized that their negative judgment and shame was a result of not understanding the excruciating mental anguish and torment of clinical depression: their not knowing just what “despair beyond despair” feels like.

I have often heard friends and relatives of individuals, who have committed suicide, say they can’t forgive the one who committed suicide because they have caused so much pain and suffering for those left behind. It is the same lack of understanding displayed by the scholars and writers who were disappointed by Primo Levi’s death. Unfortunately the diagnostic name “clinical depression” does not do justice to the ravages of the disease. We all experience feeling depressed from time to time throughout our lives; but feeling depressed is not clinical depression with its day in and day out mental pain and anguish. The adjective “clinical” is so sterile, antiseptic not portraying its depth.

Anyone, who has suffered from clinical depression, realizes they themselves did not invite theses mental states to come to be a part of their life. They came uninvited, and when the depression is finally lifted after months or years, one is older and wiser knowing it may come back again, like the last time - uninvited. If nothing else, it is a humbling experience.

My primary reason for sharing this with you today is to take mental illness and suicide out of the closet and to assure you, you are not alone. Education and support are critical for those living with mental illness. One of the most important support groups for those with mental illness and their loved ones is the National Alliance on Mental Illness or NAMI. They offer education and support groups to families and those with mental illness. There are local chapters in the greater Concord area.

Unitarian Universalist minister Barbara Meyers is a community minister at the Mission Peak UU Congregation in Fremont, CA. Her community ministry is educating the public at large and congregations about mental illness. On the Congregation’s website are video streams of interviews by Barbara with folks with specific mental illnesses. There are over 25 interviews including interviews with African American, Native American and Latino communities exploring how mental illness is perceived in these communities. I highly recommend checking it out.

On March 8 here at First Parish at 7:30 AM Dr. Nadja Reilly, who is a staff psychologist int he Department of Psychiatry at Children's Hospital, Boston will speak at the Concord Clergy and Laity meeting. She will address how faith communities can promote awareness of adolescent depression. High school students are invited to attend this meeting.

On the table at coffee hour, as well as at the pastoral care note writing table, there is contact information about local support groups, the website for Barbara Myers, and the March 8 breakfast meeting.

Last but not least, you are always welcome to come to talk to Gary, Jenny, Craig or me.

I conclude with a quote from Rainier Maria Rilke, that has brought me deep peace. I hope it does the same for you.

“I want to beg you...to be patient toward all that is unsettled in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

May it be so.

Benediction:

We do need one another. As UU minister Wayne Arnason writes and his words are often used as a closing (#698)

Take courage friends. The way is often hard, the path never clear, And the stakes are very high. Take courage. For deep down, there is another truth: You are not alone.

As I extinguish the chalice, may we carry the flame of peace and love, until we meet again.

Reading:

Excerpt from Book of Job that begins William Stryon’s book Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Darkness:

For the thing which I greatly feared is upon me, and that which I was afraid of, has come unto me. I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came