President's Desk - Dec 2008

From the President's Desk - Dec 2008

By Hugh Brady

I have just finished reading Divided Minds, by Pamela Spiro Wagner and Carolyn Spiro. It is well worth reading. Pamela and Carolyn are identical twin sisters who grew up in Massachusetts in the late 1950s and early 60s. As they entered their teenage years, one of the sisters, Pamela, began to suffer from schizophrenia. As she got older, her symptoms worsened, but before they became completely unmanageable, she managed to graduate summa cum laude from Brown University. Then the illness took over. At the same time, Carolyn was enrolled in Harvard Medical school and she eventually finished her degree and became a psychiatrist.

The book is a memoir, describing the girls’ early years and following them through 2003. It is laid out in alternating chapters; one chapter will be by Pammie and the next, describing the same time period but from a different point of view, will be by Carolyn.

Their twin stories are compelling and often harrowing. Pammie describes what she eventually calls a descent into hell, and the voices and visual hallucinations take over her life. Secret agents monitor her every movement through a microchip hidden in one of her fillings. The man in the red hazmat suit tells her to set herself on fire. The voices call her worthless and evil and are sometimes so overwhelming that she can hardly maintain contact with the real world. But during the times when her illness is in remission, she is a brilliant and award winning poet.

Alternating chapters tell of Carolyn’s efforts to help, of her agonizing inability to fix things, to make the delusions disappear. Sometimes even her determination and professional expertise are not enough to overcome the indifference and incompetence of some of the people working in the state’s public mental health system.

But at the same time, Illinois readers can marvel at how wonderful Massachusetts’ mental health system is. Pammie often has a schedule of regular home visits by the state’s mental health social workers. When she is discharged from the hospital, she usually goes to a state half way house, and from there to supportive housing. (Massachusetts got a C- in NAMI’s 2006 “Grading the States report; Illinois got an F; Massachusetts spends almost twice as much per capita on mental health than Illinois does.)

Whether you are a consumer or a family member, this book will give you a riveting account of the other side of the equation.