When you're diagnosed with a mental illness, it's as devastating as any diagnosis that carries a 15% mortality rate. Yesterday, you were you -- living, breathing, working, loving, socializing, earning. Today you are among the "mentally ill."
No one thought it could be Gabe, either. Heir to a Jewish construction company, 24-year-old Gabe looks like any of his friends at the country club in his hooded sweatshirt and microfiber pants from the Gap. There are days he is lucid and days he is not, according to his mother, Lauren.
Gabe was a difficult baby and defiant teenager. Doctors and therapists pointed to his parents divorce when Gabe was a toddler, his mothers subsequent remarriage, and the birth of his half-siblings. He was imaginative, the therapists said, high-energy, creative, spontaneous. The night Gabe tried to jump off the Veteran's Memorial Bridge which connects the states of Iowa and Nebraska, because he heard voices that told him to die, psychiatrists said he was more than imaginative, creative and spontaneous. Gabe has bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
Gabe lives with his father and spends weekends and holidays with his mother and stepfather. He has worked delivering pizzas and planting flowers, but is "let go" during or shortly after extended hospitalizations. The four year struggle to stabilize his medications has led to arrests and episodes where Gabe wanders around the city. When Gabe was first diagnosed he attended public group therapy sessions where the facilitators showed films about mental illness made in the 1960s, and a video about bipolar disorder called "Kaleidoscopes and Dark Glasses."
"That video is hilarious," says Kathleen, 50, who has lived with bipolar disorder for 30 years. I just can't see Tony Dow telling us how to live with this. Both Gabe and Kathleen have found common ground with other individuals with mental illness on message boards and chat sites. Kathleen and Gabe agree the message boards at http://www.AOL.com/health/bipolar.htm are the best for responses from real people and sharing information about medications and treatments.
Gabe has also visited the http://www.about.com message boards in the bipolar community. "Medication and therapy are the best way to control symptoms," Kathleen says, "but the chats and message boards are the only way to connect with so many people who know what you're going through."
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