Silent Stigma

We do not talk much about mental illness. Considering how widespread such disorders are — whether depression or dementia, bipolar or anxiety disorders, schizophrenia or some of the two hundred other possible diagnoses assigned to tens of millions of Americans each year — it is remarkable how singularly ill-prepared we are to cope with finding out someone we love is suffering from a mental illness. Family, where we take everything to heart, becomes a place of seemingly inexpressible heartbreak.

Mention your child, husband or mother has cancer, diabetes or heart disease and friends point you toward support groups, bring you meals, offer you respite. But mention mental illness? Most of us do not. Already emotionally and physically spent, we can feel simply too vulnerable to the value judgments of society. The pain compounds in secret.

One Vineyard mother recalls living alone in those shadows, surrounded by misperceptions, innocent denial, ignorance and stigma about her son’s overlooked illness. A course on the Island changed her life, and her son’s life. Offered through Martha’s Vineyard Community Services and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, it is a powerful and effective family-to-family program, one where those who have been there give solid and sensitive advice on coping, crisis management, communication and caring to those who are in the middle of a family gripped by one member’s mental illness. The twelve weekly sessions begin on Thursday, February seventeenth in Oak Bluffs.

“This course will give you the perspective and support to be so much more effective in your desire to help your loved one,” notes that mother. “There exists such huge limitations in our society’s grasp of this difficult and mysterious illness that you may be the only chance your family member has to get the help he needs to recover.

“I hope one day we will come out of the dark ages . . . not only will we be able to speak openly and intelligently about this illness but we will understand its cause and have found a cure.”

As of this week there is still room in the class. To sign up, call 508-693-5872.