Former Senator Thomas Eagleton has died.
Eagleton was the first vice-presidential choice of 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern; Eagleton was forced off the ticket after revelations that he had been hospitalized several times for depression and treated with electro-shock therapy. As cruel as his ouster was (an ouster McGovern later said he regretted), Eagleton played a not-unimportant role in the dramatic change in American attitudes towards mental illness and psychotherapy. It is inconceivable that we will not soon have a major presidential candidate admit he or she has been treated for depression; the number of Americans who have sought help for minor or severe mental illness is just too great.
I’m a white Christian heterosexual male. That makes me as privileged as can be. But if there’s one thing that’s a sure disqualification for higher office in my background, it’s my own past struggles with mental illness. I’ve posted about them before: here and here, for example. Let me repeat something I wrote back then:
I know we live in a confessional age. We’re cynical about “once was lost, now I’m found” narratives, and rightly so! We’ve heard them too often, and we’ve been burned by the likes of the lamentable James Frey. But if the alternative to conversion/transformation narratives is a sense of helplessness about the possibility of real change, I’d rather the marketplace continue to be flooded with stories of hard-won miracles. In some ways, my story is fairly mundane; in other ways, it’s fairly dramatic. And if nothing else, my story makes clear to me (and perhaps to others) that addictions, personality disorders, and mental illnesses can — through a combination of grace and exhaustive, long-term effort, be overcome. Especially with mental illness, a clinical diagnosis only describes the past and the present, not the future. Where there is even a tiny spark of willingness to change (and inside some pretty rotten, crazy people, that spark can be found), there is reason to hope. I don’t write to give false hope to those who love the mentally ill and the chronically addicted. But as one who has worn the handcuffs, felt the restraints, been locked away and medicated to the point of incontinence again and again, been divorced multiple times, and spent tens of thousands on therapists, I know that change can happen.
My freedom to write this, knowing that my job and my volunteer position are both safe — that’s part of a legacy of comfort and confidence that Thomas Eagleton’s very public revelation helped bring about. And I’m grateful for that.
I just got done reading Against Depression by Peter Kramer (the dude who wrote Listening to Prozac). It was an interesting exploration of what depression means to people in Western cultures, and what actually treating it like a disease and not just an affectation would do to our culture. I guess this is tangential, but maybe you’d enjoy the book.
I have to say, I feel that there are a lot of people who, for whatever reason, don’t accept themselves as being mentally ill. I think that a cause of a lot of peoples’ problems with drugs is that they are self-medicating. I’ve got some attention problems that I medicated with caffeine; my brother’s (much) more severe ADD was too-often mellowed out with alcohol or marijuana. I watched a close (albeit, in retrospect, very manipulative) take drugs and alcohol in excess (again, I didn’t really realize at the time how much he was taking; I was only 18) to, I presume, combat his depression. I think this happens a lot more than people realize. Although I majored in psychology in college, I don’t recall ever having read up on this … although I’m sure that someone, somewhere has already come to this conclusion.
Myself, I’ve always believed that strangeness is the norm, and that people who insist too much that they are “normal” … well, they are the ones with the real problems. Anyway, I think that there’s such pressure to be normal, that sometimes people start using certain substances to try to feel how they think everyone else feels, without realizing that, perhaps, its their brain chemistry that’s to blame and not something inherently wrong with them … that, or they make the mistake of believing that no one else has problems … anyway, I’m starting to ramble, but hopefully some of that made sense. I’m a firm believer in therapy as a benefit to all, and I do believe that people can change. But I also believe that true change is very difficult, and that most people don’t want to do the work.
I married a wonderful guy whose depression pretty much crippled him until I told him he had to get help because I couldn’t take any more. Thankfully, we found a combination of medications that enable him to get out of bed in the morning (literally) and work. I’m a believer in the power of medication to fix what years of trying to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” simply could not do.
On the other hand, I am not a fan of medicalizing every single personality trait, “fixing” everyone to fit somebody’s ideal, or depending on medication to fix everything.
That you changed so much, Hugo, without medication – and made it stick – is a great testament to the power of God, and I hope that nobody uses it to belittle anybody who needs medication. There’s a tricky balance that needs to be found between innate ability to change and using chemistry – and I think it covers more aspects of life than mental illness, too. Coming from a family where you Do Not Ask For Help, Ever, it took me years to get to the point where I knew my husband could not fix himself (and I could not fix him either). Wasted years? I try not to dwell on it too much.
I know I will tend to put the balance further on the personal change side than the chemical change side, but I wonder where others would put it.
As someone who has struggled with bipolar disorder, I can say that the people who have the best outcomes are those who look to medication to give them an equal footing with their illness – ie, it doesn’t “solve” the problem, but it makes it dealable.
The simply fact is that the treatments that are available are not magic bullets, but they make it possible to live a good life, which is not something that was available only a few decades ago. No matter which pills I take, I have to deal with the fact that sometimes they fail. And that I have to be vigilant to when I am not excited but am in fact hypomanic, which means that I have to make sure that I am not alone and that I am sleeping well (messing with your sleep schedule is a sure fire way of causing a manic episode if you have type I bipolar disorder.)
But I also have to stop myself from using my disease as a crutch – and prevent other people from using it against me. As a crutch, I mean I have to take responsibility for those things I can control. If I am having a bad day because I didn’t take my meds, that’s not my disease, that’s me. Also, I know that my condition predisposes me to alcoholism, drug addictions and hyposexuality. I CAN choose to not do these things. That’s the power the meds give me. If I decide to drink to excess or simply too often, that’s my decision.
On the other hand, I also have people who are close to me who like to blame my emotions on my illness. There are those who everytime I get upset start blaming me for not taking my meds. It is very infuriating that I now have to rationalize my every emotion.
And let me be very clear that I am not suggesting that a spiritual conversion makes the need for medication irrelevant. I know many wise and wonderful people who have been Light to me in my recovery who still find it necessary to take meds. I was fortunate not to need them any longer; I don’t confuse my good fortune with virtue.
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