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The Heartbreak of Being There - Page 2

© John McManamy

Or this candid admission from a wife:

"Although Gail's commitment to Jeff and to their marriage seemed strong at the time of our conversation, she did admit that she sometimes wonders whether she can sustain the relationship. At one point she acknowledged, "I'd be lying to you if I said I haven't been emotionally scarred from this illness because I'm sure that I have." Later she described how, shortly after moving to Boston to pursue a PhD in a prestigious graduate program, Jeff fell into "one of his suicidal states and I thought, 'I'm never going to be able to do this [graduate school] with him like this.'" "There are times," she continued, "when I feel like, 'God, maybe my life would be better off if I wasn't with him.'"

...

"Describing a recent episode, Gail said, 'He was incredibly suicidal and I don't know how long I can live with someone [like that].' She told me that if Jeff actually did commit suicide, her response wouldn't be 'Oh he was so sick.' If would be, 'God damned, he didn't love me enough to stay with me.'"

The author, a sociologist at Boston College, sat in on meetings at a friends and family support group of the Manic Depressive and Depressive Association of Boston, and interviewed 60 participants.

The initial catastrophe of a crisis or diagnosis, Karp tells us, is tempered by the family's optimism in their own abilities to provide support and in medical science. Heroic measures are possible in the early going because "sympathy margins remain wide and caregivers often believe that once an emotionally ill person realizes how much he or she is cared about, they will get better."

And a few pills, they assume, will fix everything. "Oh, medication - wonderful," says the mother of a schizo-affective son. "You know, my husband was glad. I mean 'Oh, this is going to fix him. Everything will be fine.'"

Many families turn out to have this kind of good fortune - or at least achieve a result everyone can live with - but these weren't the people David Karp talked to. "The realization that a family member's mental illness may never go away is a crucial identity turning point in the caregiver's career," he writes, "because it forces to the surface of consciousness an array of emotions that previously may have been dimly felt."

Many parents have to face the pain of letting go of their dreams for their children, and with it, their own life expectations. "As weeks become months or years," Karp tells us, "caregivers nearly always come to feel greatly frustrated by the persistent, ongoing trauma of mental illness. They find it harder to muster the compassion felt during the early stages of the illness. It is also harder for them to avoid feelings of anger and resentment."

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