The Buie Knife

'The Lobotomist': Shocking Expose

On PBS' American Experience is a shocking expose of Dr. Walter Freeman, "the lobotomist." This is essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand the history of treating mental illness in this country. My grandmother barely escaped a lobotomy in the early 1950s, as recounted by my uncle in the second link below.

Related:

• 'My Lobotomy': Powerful Story
• 'I'd Rather Have a Bottle in Front of Me Than a Frontal Lobotomy'
• Rosemary and the Kennedys Exemplary Leadership on Mental Retardation

Strengthen Gun Regulations, Commitment Laws for Mental Illness

In the aftermath of the Blacksburg, VA massacre, psychologist Jonathan Kellerman writes in the Wall Street Journal that our mental health commitment laws need to be strengthened. Regulations regarding background checks for mental illness also need to be strengthened, a New York Times article makes obvious.

Reflections on Anger, Depression, Validation and Invalidation in Individuals, Families, Organizations, Societies, National and World Politics

Anger is a secondary emotion, a response to something else, often emotional hurt or frustration. When hurt or frustration or other basic feelings are validated, especially by the one perceived to have caused it, anger usually lessons dramatically. Invalidation of feelings and experiences contributes to depression, anger and aggression. Depression is anger internalized, turned in on oneself. "Anger externalized can turn to aggression and violence." "When Anger Pays." Though the Bible and Chinese philosophy warn against self-indulgent, uncontrolled anger, and anger held onto long, ie "don't let the sun set with anger in your heart," and the importance of forgiveness, the Bible is full of righteous anger expressed by Jesus and the prophets. Righteous anger can be energizing. Turning anger into positive energy is a great way to deal with it.

These principles make good guidelines for human relations. They don't always work, of course, and can be applied in simplistic, naive and ineffectual fashion. An absurd example is the suggestion that what Hitler and Nazi Germany needed were "validation of feelings" and accommodation. Obviously not. But the overly harsh Treaty of Versailles after World War I and the lack of concern for the conditions in Germany did contribute to Germany's aggression that led to World War II.

How to Define 'Happiness"? Are You Happy?

New research and recent articles inspire me to reflect on the definition of happiness. My mother used to say that in middle age, you choose whether or not to be happy, and she chose to be happy.

• "Money Can't Buy Happiness? This Blogger Begs to Differ," by Gretchan Rubin, who blogs at the Happiness Project and is writing a book on the subject. She cites a Pew Research Center 2006 report, the percentage of people who declare themselves "very happy" goes up as family income rises. "Twenty five percent of people with incomes of $30,000 or less said they're "very happy." That compared with 50% of people with incomes of $150,000 or more." The Pew Report says "about one third of Americans are very happy." Fifty percent are "pretty happy," and only 15% of Americans are "not too happy." Not having to worry about money can contribute a great deal to happiness, Rubin says. Richer people experience a "freedom from (financial) worry."
• Economist Richard Layard identifies the "big seven" of happiness as family relationships, financial situation, work, community and friends, health, personal freedom, and personal values.
• Wealthy high-achievers are not necessarily happy when their moods are measured every half-hour, according to Science Magazine. In fact, they are more likely to be anxious or angry. They also "spend more time working, commuting and engaging in obligatory nonwork activities, such as maintaining their homes. All of these are associated with lower happiness," observes Jonathan Clement in the WSJ.
• "Stumbling on Happiness" author Daniel Gilbert, a popular Harvard professor, tells Scott Stossel in The New York Times: "If we were to experience the world exactly as it is, we'd be too depressed to get out of bed in the morning. But if we were to experience the world exactly as we want it to be, we'd be too deluded to find our slippers." Healthy people can be deluded into greater happiness when granted the mere illusion of control over their environment; the clinically depressed recognize the illusion for what it is. All in all, Stossel concludes, "it's yet more evidence that unhappy people have the more accurate view of reality — and that learning how to kid ourselves may be a key to mental health."
• "People misunderstand happiness. They think it's the absence of trouble. That's not happiness, that's luck. Happiness is the ability to live well alongside trouble...No two people have the same trouble, or the same way of metabolizing it." In defiance of Tolstoy's statement in Anna Karenina that happy families are all alike while unhappy ones are each different in their own way, in actuality, "no two happy people are happy in the same way." -- "Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story," by Rachel Kadish. Reviewed by Merle Rubin in Wall Street Journal, "The Subtleties of Happiness." (subscription required)

When Mental Illness Strikes A Family of Faith

Going through files from my work at NAMI in the 1990s, I found a brochure by the Rev. John Baggett, former executive director of NAMI of NC: "When mental illness strikes in a family, it is like being struck by lightening. It is unexpected and it is devastating. The experience can be like a death in the family. The family must cope with and adapt to a terrible loss. Because of society's misunderstanding of mental illness, it often can seem similar to an experience of some terrible event which brings shame to the family. It is a tragedy, and like all tragedies, it raises profound human questions for those who are affected by it. For a religiously committed family, it may, as other tragedies often do, initiate a crisis of faith." What can faith communities do to minister to families of people with mental illness? Click.

Trouble

How has this verse applied to your own life? Job: "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of Is come unto me. I was not in safety, neither had I rest, neither was I quiet; yet trouble came."

My Grandmother's Mental Illness

My first awareness that there was soemthing called "mental illness" came relatively early in life. When I was four or five years old, I remember visiting my grandmother. What a fun time we had together. She would put me on her lap, and let me "drive" her blue Chevrolet about town. With great enthusiasm, she would tell me stories with a lilt in her voice and eyes that danced with delight.

One day, however, my grandmother didn't seem to have any energy to play with me. There was no longer a lilt in her voice. There were dark circles under her eyes, presumably from lack of sleep or always feeling tired. She would sit in her chair and stare for hours. Her response to most everything was a mumbled word, a long sigh, or a grimace.

My mother explained to me that my grandmother was "depressed." The official diagnosis was unipolar depression. It seemed to be a clearly biological illness, and cyclical. Then, suddenly, she would snap out of out, and return to her "old self" -- quoting Shakespeare and Milton to us, impressing us with her German, traveling to foreign cultures and coming home to tell us of her interesting adventures. Through it all, she maintained her reputation in the community as a teacher, an intellectual, a political activist, and an all-around "grand lady."

Despite my grandmother's periodic depressions, most of the time I thought of my family as happy, close, loving, supportive. If you asked my siblings, I suspect they would have said the same.

My uncle wrote in detail about his mother's illness in his book, Curses and Blessings. Read about his experiences and how he became an advocate for people with mental illnesses.

Was the Apostle Paul Mentally Ill?

I have contended that mental illness has always been with us. The author Frederick Buechner has made the case the Apostle Paul was certainly neurotic, at least by any modern definition of neurosis:

"You don't have to read many of Paul's letters to observe violent swings of mood from deep depression to exaltation," Buechner wrote in Peculiar Treasures. "Pauls' passionate likes and dislikes. His boasting. His dark sense of guilt. Almost certainly it was some sort of neurosis that was bugging him. Three times he prayed to God to get rid of it for him, he said, but God never did. Maybe it's not hard to guess why.

"Paul's life would no doubt have [been] greatly enriched by a psychological cure. But such a cure would have greatly impoverished generations of his readers' lives."

Words from Isaiah 53 -- "Through his wounds we are healed" -- are "words to be reserved only for the most grievious Wound, the holiest Healing," Buechner wrote. "But maybe in some small measure these words can be applied to Paul. His very hangups and phobias and general quirkiness can give us insights into the human heart, and into ourselves. It was a high price for him to pay for our comfort and edification."

More Than One Out of Five Americans Will Experience a Mental Disorder

Found this in a file on my work with NAMI from the 1990s:

Until the 1990s, the subject was taboo, a matter of secrecy and same. And the refusal to talk about it -- the denial and the isolation that many people have felt -- has made matters worse, and has prevented healing from taking place. Some 23 percent of North Americans will, at some time in their lives, experience a mental illness or mental disorder, according to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. According to the 2003 report of the U.S. President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, major mental illness, including clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, when compared with all other diseases (such as cancer and heart disease), is the most common cause of disability in the United States. Source: Wikipedia definition of Mental Illness). About one-third of the homeless suffer from a serious mental illness. (Source).

If all the people who have experienced depression, suicidal thoughts, phobias, addictions, compulsions, psychosis, or other mental disorders, and their families who are often deeply affected, came together, they would probably fill the world's largest closet. Yet too often they feel isolated, alone, ashamed, alienated, guilty. They don't seek help. They believe the problems will just go away. And they don't realize that many of their neighbors and friends have had similar feelings.

Even some of the most prominent individuals in history have experienced mental illness. Our 16th president,

Darkness Visible: What It Feels Like to be Depressed and to Contemplate Suicide

Going through some files, I found this from the 1990s:

Perhaps the best book I ever read that conveys what it is like inside the head of someone who is clinically depressed is Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness by William Styron. It was a New York Times bestseller. Links. Styron is also the Pulitzer-prize-winning author of The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie's Choice.

As part of my work with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in the 1990s, I attended a breakfast on Capitol Hill where Styron read excerpts from his book and made a plea to senators and congressmen for more money for research into the causes of mental illness. The causes, as he saw it, were "intermingled factors of abnormal chemistry, behavior, and genetics."

Darkness Visible opens with a description of a trip to receive an award as a great humanitarian writer, and a check for $25,000. Despite the accolades and accomplishment that had come his way, Styron felt worthless, as if he didn't deserve the award, and he rebuffed his hosts in public. He promptly lost the $25,000 check, and had to solicit his horrified hosts' help in finding it.

In this passage, he is talking about his plans to kill himself: