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People Like Us

© John McManamy

"We are beginning to gather into a political force, with language strongly suggestive of the civil rights movement."

Our initial healing may take place in our therapies or medications, but the final stage of the journey is ours and ours alone. Yet before this can happen we invariably need to turn to people like us for support and encouragement, not to mention for the occasional swift kick in the pants. We are seeing an explosion of this kind of activity on the internet, of which this article is but one small example.

Jay Neugeboren in his new book, "Transforming Madness" (William Morrow and Co, New York, 358 pages, hardcover, $25.00), details our counterparts in the real world, what is now a rapidly-growing consumer-survivor movement, of people like us helping people like us. We are beginning to gather into a political force, complete with petty little rivalries and language strongly suggestive of the civil rights movement of an earlier era. The book's message is one of cautious hope, but the author has arrived in this place only first through the unfolding of his own personal horror story - or, rather, that of his brother.

In an earlier work, "Imagining Robert", the author recounts his brother's mental breakdown at age 19 and the next 30 years of his life at the mercy of a barbarian mental health system. In "Transforming Madness", Robert is little better off, warehoused in a Staten Island facility with hostile and at best indifferent staff, locked in his room at night, deprived of the use of even his false teeth.

Robert's situation is contrasted with more enlightened programs around the Northeast and some spectacular success stories. We hear of Moe, mentally ill and proud, who helps run Boston's innovative Vinfen program. "There's no shame in having a psychiatric condition or caring for another person who has one," he tells the author. "Take away shame and anything's possible."

We meet with former hopeless cases - men and women who have languished in back wards for years - who have returned to the world to lead distinctly uncrippled lives, janitors, teachers, clerks, physicians. Then, the author hears Robert's voice in his head:

"'Hey - what about me?' I hear him ask. 'Why can't anyone help me ...'"

And why not? Eventually, over the long term, most of us do improve. Our brains are not simply genetically hardwired to keep us in one state of mind the rest of our lives. Citing famed neurologists, Neugeboren writes of the plasticity of the nervous system and the brain's unending capability to remap its seemingly limitless neuronal pathways. "All experience," he says,