I Think We Should See Other People: Mental Disorder & Cultural Change

David Lovelace — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 17:57:06 +0000

A few weeks back I checked my messages and heard my old friend, James join the growing ranks of the enthusiastically self-diagnosed. "Dave, guess what? I'm bipolar. Really. There was this show on public television and - hey - I'm bipolar. So Dave, I'm in the club, pretty sure. Give me a call." Ever since I started working on my memoir, speaking publically about what I call "the family illness" it seems my friends have been dropping like flies. My neighbors list off symptoms and ask me - me - about medicines and coping and cures. Look at our newspapers, magazines and, yes, blogs. America's nervous, frantically searching the drawers of science for a magic bullet, for chemical absolution.

It didn't use to be like this. Back in the early ‘80's, when I came of age, when my depressions and manias kicked in, few people were out courting diagnoses. It's easy to forget how far we've travelled as a culture, from viewing mental illness as hopeless and shameful, a virtual death sentence, to the present growing concerns of over-diagnosis and a kind of psychiatric faddism among the general public. Yes, of course, fear and denial remain the biggest obstacles to effective treatment, but there's no doubt the cultural landscape has changed over the past twenty-five years. Goodbye Nurse Ratched and Hello Dr. Feelgood.

Time out.

I should have come clean earlier. It's quite possible Psychology Today has made a mistake here. I am not a mental health professional. I'm not a shrink, therapist or social worker. I'm not an expert - in anything. What's worse, I regularly quit therapy, sometimes abruptly. I like the old school moniker "Manic-Depression" far more than the preferred (and toothless) term "Bipolar Disorder." I flunked high school chemistry in spectacular fashion and remain estranged from scientific method. Frankly, I'm more qualified to discuss angels dancing on pinheads than the intricacies of neuroscience.

In short, I'm a poet - your garden variety, manic-depressive poet. It's traditional, time honored profession among those of my ilk. Again, let me clarify, put things in perspective. Shelly died at 26, Keats flamed out at 32, and Byron died of fever fighting someone else's revolution. I blog.

But I have what's known as street cred. I've been bipolar for thirty years and I've managed it, more or less, for fifteen. My mother was hospitalized and labeled schizophrenic in 1949; the year lithium's psychiatric benefits were discovered. I curled up and wanted to die when I was sixteen and again in college. My father, brother and I had our first manic breaks in 1986- boom, boom, boom. My family could have saved Gregor Mendel a great deal of trouble. We could have made the cover of Genetics Today.

I've seen both my parents drown in the sickness. I've seen my brother sink down. I've denied my own madness and I've loved it almost to death. My dad hospitalizes me and visa versa and when it's over no one talks. I take my pills and he takes his; we all take our pills. But last time was different. Last time my mother almost died and then later when no one would talk my anger broke open wide. I charged at our history head on, stopped writing poetry, stopped muffling the hard truth with metaphor. I've come out and - what's more difficult, more complex - I've outed my family. I've stepped out into the public square and set out my wares. This blog, The Bipolar Express, is about what happens next, who screams and storms off, who applauds and who shrugs. It's about examining this illness in its present cultural context, about our conversations - yours as well as mine.