Sister Carole M. Stephens – October 2016 GC

I am beyond happy that mental illness is being discussed more openly than ever before – and that the LDS Church does not actively stigmatize the use of prescription drugs to deal with them.

My mother was schizophrenic, and nobody knew about it until after the birth of twins – her 3rd and 4th children. The worry of raising kids in “the big city” caused her first break, so my father moved us to the small, rural town where she was raised. He spent the next 25 years working as an elementary school janitor, doing manual labor labor here and there as a second job to support a wife and eight children. She coped admirably for the next almost 50 years due to my father shouldering EVERY responsibility both parents normally do. She took her “sleeping pills” (which kept her condition out of our awareness) and lived in her own wonderful, stress-free bubble – while my dad wore out his physical body, in poverty, to make sure she could live in that world.

I never heard him complain, in any way, not once. I never heard him say a single bad word about her or his situation. He literally laid down (put aside) his former life (of great promise, frankly) for his best friend.

Shortly before she passed away, she confided to my brother and sister-in-law that she remembered everything about her schizophrenic breaks (two in total) and was scared beyond words to have it happen again. They didn’t tell her, but they had started seeing small symptoms and were worried about exactly that. The hallucinations, the radical change in personality, the vicious dreams, the hellish battle in her mind: she remembered everything. She also said she could never express her deep gratitude and amazement at my father’s devotion to her through it all – for 50 years. Her greatest wish was to see him again and thank him for giving her a joyful life.

She died, completely unexpectedly, about a week later.

That, to me, is the Atonement in a nutshell: living in such a way that people’s weaknesses and shortcomings don’t matter – in such a way that, when all is said and done, one’s life helped others have peace and joy.

First I think I went a little overboard with my Jesus isn’t there comments from before. What I was trying to say is that we’ve taken the name of Jesus upon ourselves and I feel that being there for someone, being there for them right now can be a better alternative to telling someone that one day in the distant future (or in the afterlife) things will be made right. We can be there for someone “doing unto one of the least of these” and filling the role of atoner for someone today.

Curt,

Your father sounds like a true saint. I think we (mere mortals) exercise and apply the atonement in our interactions with others. Often when we face problems that do not seem to have a resolution a person can step up and “swallow” the injustice of a situation so that others do not have to bear the brunt of a bad situation. It sounds like your father did just that. He sacrificed of self to make life better for others. There’s not much better a person can do in this life than that. If you don’t mind I’d like to look at what your father did to explore a few more ideas. No disrespect intended, I’m looking for additional perspective.

I never heard him complain, in any way, not once. I never heard him say a single bad word about her or his situation. He literally laid down (put aside) his former life (of great promise, frankly) for his best friend.

Again, no disrespect intended and to illustrate that let me start with a lead in. The other family I know whose lives were touched by mental illness was different than the first family I mentioned in the OP. In this case the father sacrificed for the family, kept a child’s illness out of the public eye, and quietly went about putting out the fires in an effort for everyone to lead a “normal” life (with normal in quotes because after all, what is normal?). The child with a mental illness had children of their own and they were abusive towards them. The grandchildren never knew because the illness was never discussed, they grew up thinking that the illness behaviors were normal behaviors. I suspect it was a generational thing, people just didn’t talk about mental illness from that generation, it was like a social black eye (and still is in many ways). The grandparent eventually died and it was left to the children to discover the illness and inherit the job of firemen all while learning how dysfunctional they were themselves. The sacrifice was noble but in other ways it was a curse. The grandchildren may have been more prepared had they known from the beginning. They could have understood that some of the things they were subjected to were not normal and there was a more charitable explanation for the abusive behaviors. They may have even been in a better position to protect themselves.

I’m not saying what I’m about to say is what you were trying to communicate but I question whether it is healthy in the long run for one person to shoulder all the weight. To be the stoic, silent sufferer that takes all the punishment in stride. I think it takes a community to help a person affected by mental illness and so far society as a whole appears to only know how to help people in the form of heroic efforts made by individuals, like your father. No one person can do it alone and if they try they may be creating more problems down the line. That and I believe that it is perfectly okay for people to complain and say bad things about their situation. It’s more healthy than keeping it bottled up and letting it out doesn’t make someone a lesser person. I should reiterate. I know you didn’t say that, I’m just saying what I’m feeling.

Another point, there are mental illnesses and there are mental illnesses. Many are spectrum disorders, meaning some people with the same illness can have it far “worse” than others (worse in quotes because it’s relative and it’s not a contest).

It’s a serious problem and I’d love for communal atonement to play a larger role in healing the people suffering from mental illness and healing the people in their periphery. I’ve seen unatoned mental illness devastate generations of people. I wish there was a better way for Christ to help these people… in this life.

I’m truly sorry if I’ve offended anyone.

No offense taken, nibbler. It is an important discussion.

Absolutely, keeping mental illness a secret is a generational thing, although it still is an issue in too many places and societies. I do NOT support that kind of secrecy, and I didn’t mean to imply that. I have seen some of what you describe play out in my own extended family, and I am glad we now know about my mom’s condition and my dad’s sacrifices for her.

An odd statement, at first, perhaps, but I love the fact that Utah has a high rate of anti-depressant use. It shows that medications for things like depression are accepted and normalized more there than other places, but there still are open attacks on that use. I still read criticisms of Mormonism for that rate, but I look at the overall issues (high birth rates / post-partum depression, lower level of self-medication through alcohol, mountain-impacted climate, higher Western states rate generally, etc.) and am ecstatic such medication is available and common. I am glad the younger generations are more open about acknowledging and dealing directly with these issues.

I ought to add that my mom’s immediate family knew about her condition, especially since it was hereditary and not confined just to her among her siblings. My dad moved us to the town where she was raised specifically because she had a lot of family who still lived there and could help in case something happened. The kids didn’t know, but I am pretty sure one of her sisters (my aunt) also was schizophrenic, and one of her brothers (my uncle) was on and off of medication for years, living as a bachelor, college janitor, and eternal student, finally (I believe) committing suicide while off his meds. That would have been my mom’s end, I am sure, without my dad – and the irony of him finding employment doing the same thing my uncle did doesn’t escape me. (My dad turned down a management offer in SLC that would have paid him over twice what he ended up making as a janitor.)

My mom’s case was severe, in that her breaks came from worry and anxiety. I liken it to a computer cpu that won’t shut down and has to be manually overridden by holding down the power key. When she started to worry, her meds allowed her to sleep – to “shut down”, so to speak. She lived as long as she did (more than thirty years longer than the siblings I mentioned) in a state of relative normalcy specifically because my dad shielded her from anxiety and worry. She didn’t work; he handled the finances; he cooked the meals (partly because he was a good cook and she . . . wasn’t); he took care of all the discipline; she read and played the piano and taught piano lessons in our home and visited friends and, literally, lived in her own world. It was the only way she possibly could have been happy, so he did it.

I am not trying to imply that this model is best for everyone else – or even for many. It was what was necessary for my mom, but she really was an extreme case. My point simply is that doing whatever it takes to help people have peace and joy in their lives is a noble endeavor – and a key component of what I see as modeling the life Jesus of Nazareth actually lived and the concept of atonement.

It’s hard to mourn with those who mourn when there’s no awareness.

Amen – and amen.