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A Consumer Speaks Out

A Message from Garth House, Columbus, OH
Dec. 16, 2000

 

Note: Garth House is a free-lance writer and director of volunteers for the NAMI Ohio state office. Below, he describes the tremendous effectiveness of the Family-to-Family Education Program and tells us much about his own personal growth.

I feel compelled to write a testimonial to NAMI Ohio's Family-to-Family Program because it has so radically transformed my relationship to my mother and consequently my ability to cope with the bipolar disorder I have had for so many years.

Eighteen years ago, when I left law school and entered a psychiatric ward for the first of what would be many, many times, my parents had no idea of the nature or dynamics of the illness from which I suffered. They felt the need to shield my brothers from what was happening to me, and a silence fell upon my parents and me about my bizarre and incomprehensible behavior. Thus began the enormous isolation that was to plague me for many years. It was bad enough that friends and lovers fall away, but what was really excruciating was that within my own family I was left alone to bear the burden of the strange psychotic world I kept going in and out of.

My parents stuck by me, refusing to abandon me to the streets (as recommended by the doctors I had seen); nonetheless, their ignorance of the true nature of my illness created enormous tension and stress within the household. I must add that my ignorance of the illness also contributed to the suffering, since for years I bore great guilt over what I was convinced was not an illness, but rather a weakness of character or a perverse refusal to "grow up."

Convinced that work would straighten me out, my parents urged me to take jobs, even though in retrospect I realize I was suffering from clinical depression. Not surprisingly, these attempts failed, bringing yet more despair and more guilt. My parents and I became an isolated trio of silence and pain. They had nowhere to turn, and neither did I. There was unexpressed anger and frustration on both sides. As an adult yearning for independence, I began to see my parents as adversaries. They in turn, were torn between viewing me as ill and yet wondering if there were not something willful and perverse in my inability to cope.

When my mother decided to enroll in the Family-to-Family Education Program, I had managed to achieve two years of psychiatric stability. About four weeks after they started the program (and due to medically supervised reduction in my medication), I suffered a decompensation that landed me once again in the hospital. I shall never forget my mother's demeanor when she came to visit me. There was a clarity and strength in her presence I had never experienced before. There was a calmness in the face of this crisis that I found strengthening. And she was very clear in her understanding that we had a common enemy in the disease itself. How liberating it was to hear her words, "You are not to blame for this."

For the first time since the onset of the illness, I felt a precious family member was allied with me in a common understanding of what I had been up against for years. The knowledge, emotional support, and insight that my mother had gained through the Family-to-Family Program had shattered years of silence and denial, opened gates of communication between us, and allowed us to speak openly about this catastrophic illness that had struck our family. Her understanding of serious brain disorders gained through the program has helped me better accept and understand my own illness and permitted me to let go of the shame and guilt that haunted me for so many years. Now she has taken it upon herself to educate my brothers about my illness.

The NAMI Ohio program has brought healing to me and to my family. I am convinced it is the single most important vehicle for driving the future growth of the family movement, providing as it does such a comprehensive approach to every aspect of dealing with a serious brain disorder in a loved one. My mother bore the pain of my illness so deeply for so many years.

The NAMI Ohio Family-to-Family Education Program has liberated both of us from being mute victims so we could become unrelenting fighters against these devastating illnesses, illnesses which are so cruel and which show no quarter.

 

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