I’m certainly not a doctor nor am I well versed in psychology but I have around forty years of gut wrenching experience doing everything possible to keep my mother’s mental illness under control. My long journey began before Mama had her first major breakdown, but I did not take what I saw as her quirkiness and anxiety very seriously in the beginning. 

She and I were both taking college classes at the time at different universities. I was busy learning how to navigate through my freshman year while she was putting in the final hours of a long and determined effort to work and complete a degree at the same time. At first she mainly took classes a few hours here and a few hours there but as she neared the end of her studies she became more and more determined to push harder so that she might finish sooner. 

The result left her working eight to ten hours a day, keeping our family together and studying until the early hours of the morning. She had always been an optimistic and energetic soul so I was convinced that she would be just fine. Slowly, however, she began to show cracks in her endurance that I mostly ignored, thinking that a bit of sleep on the weekend would no doubt cure all of her ills.

In looking back I realize that she was already showing signs of her bipolar disorder but I had never before encountered anyone with that illness so I did not understand that she was growing quite sick without any kind of medical intervention. She would tell me that one of her professors offered to take her and a group of students for a ride in his plane. That sounded like fun to me but she whispered that she was afraid that his intention was to throw her out of the aircraft when he reached a certain height. Instead of taking her seriously I just laughed assuming that she was simply joking. 

Another time she told me that the professors at her school wanted her to date and marry one of the lecturers. She insisted that he was having problems and that his peers knew that he needed a steadying force like her in his life. Nonetheless, she was not interested in a relationship with him and so she wondered what she should do about the pressure being placed on her. 

I was never certain that any of what she told me was just a misunderstanding on her part or a figment of a very vivid imagination. While I thought her comments were weird they did not indicate to me that she was having mental problems. After all, she was maintaining her job, paying our family’s bills and even dating now and then. I tended to brush off her strange comments as nothing more than a bit of silliness. 

Just before I got married I landed a job as a teachers’ aide at a public school. My mother and I drove there together so that I might finalize some paperwork with the principal. During my interlude the principal asked if I knew of anyone who might want to work at the school. She had a fifth grade teaching position open and had been unable to find a qualified person to fill the spot. With school opening in a matter of days she was feeling desperate to find a good teacher for her students. I laughed and told her that my mother had recently finished college and was looking for a full time position as a teacher. I added that she had taught the fifth grade at a private religious school for several years as well. 

Before either of us had time to think about what was happening I had gone to the car to tell my mother that the principal wanted to interview her for a job. Within minutes the school leader was impressed enough that she hired Mama on the spot. We would work together in the same school for several months until after my wedding day. It was fun to see my mother relaxing a bit and enjoying a regular paycheck that seemed like a fortune to her. 

My position as a teachers’ aide was only contractual for a semester, so after Christmas I no longer had contact with my mother and her work. Up until that time everyone boasted that she was a wonderful addition to the faculty and she seemed quite happy there as well. 

I am not certain what happened in the spring semester. Mama and I rarely talked about school or work when I went to visit her. She had seemed happier and more relaxed than I had witnessed in a very long time, but when the end of the school year came she tearfully announced that the principal had not renewed her contract. She created all sorts of incredible stories to explain why her boss had been unhappy with her work. I suspected that she just felt heartbroken because she had always been kind of rockstar when it came to anything she had ever attempted to do. This was a blow to her ego but I believed it would blow over in no time.

I began to feel more and more uncomfortable about my mother’s mental health as July came and she was still stewing over losing her job. When she showed no interest in the first landing of humans on the moon I knew something was totally out of whack. She had watched the space program developing from it beginning with unchecked enthusiasm. 

As July came to a close she broke down totally. She sat in a darkened house with the windows closed and the drapes pulled tightly together. She was crying and looking like a creature being stalked by invisible adversaries. She worried that someone was trying to blame her for a horrendous crime. She peeked outside to watch the cars that drove by her home. She warned me to be careful. This time I knew without a doubt that she was very very sick. 

My mother would spend time with psychiatrists from that moment forward. Her illness was not a one off kind of situation. She was chronically ill and without proper medication her symptoms of depression, paranoia and mania would return again and again. I had to watch her constantly and be able to see the signs that she had abandoned her medications and get her back to her doctors and her medications. It was the most challenging aspect of my life and I spent thousands of hours balancing her wellbeing with that of my husband and children. 

I write about this because we now have a man charged with managing the health agencies of the United States who talks about antidepressants being addictive and suggesting that those who take them might be better served spending time at a well being farm. My refutation to his thinking is that he obviously has little or no medical understanding of what it is like for someone with severe depression. Once the cycle begins inside their brains it only increases so painfully that they are literally unable to pull out of the doldrums without the help of trained doctors. There were specific medications that allowed my mother to work and lead a happy and productive life. Whenever she decided on her own to stop using them her worst symptoms quickly returned. 

I would hope that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would not attempt to create confusing complications for people with mental illnesses and for the families who care for them. I can’t imagine telling my mom that she was going to a wellness farm when she was in the throes of a major attack. She would have immediately run away thinking that I was going to put her away like they did in times of old when people were called crazy. Even if she had wanted to go to such a place my experience tells me that she would have only become worse, not better with her meds. 

So I say to Mr. Kennedy, please leave it to the doctors with years of experience to help bring the mentally ill to a better place. His job should only be to manage the many departments dedicated to our nation’s health, not to determine the kind of medical care that any of us need. My mother’s story would have been far more tragic but for the kind doctors who always knew how to help her feel good again. I hope that RFK Jr. does not mess up that kind of doctor/patient relationship.