Contributing Writer – Amy Bazerman
It’s been nine years since I came home to find my then 13-year-old sitting at the top of the stairs, holding a knife to her stomach. Nine years since I rushed her to Children’s Hospital and had to utter the words, my child is suicidal. Nine years since she was placed in inpatient care with other children who were severely depressed, psychotic, manic, self-injurious, and a mix of all of the above. Nine years since I lived outwardly what I already knew inwardly as a therapist and health care worker. The mental health care system in this country is fundamentally fucked.
As a parent, I did my damndest to get the resources my daughter desperately needed. I spent endless hours on the computer researching facilities, treatments, therapists, psychiatrists, and support groups. I lived on the phone talking to people who could give me no answers, help, or hope. My husband and I drove to Boston every day during the snowiest winter on record to visit our child, who was placed in a locked unit for her safety. We couldn’t talk to her during the day as she didn’t have access to phones or devices, again for her safety. She was only allowed to leave the unit after she had earned the privilege to do so through positive behavioral choices. I thought to myself, do they think she had a choice in being sick? Did she choose to be so severely ill that she almost died? Could she make a choice not to want to be depressed and die? Would she just play the game and behave like she was ok so that she could leave the unit, use her phone again, and be with her family? How is this helpful for anyone? Why is it a punishment for her to have a mental illness? Do they take phones away from cancer patients and not allow them to leave the floor until they prove their cancer is better? Like I said, the whole system is fucked.
When we come from a punitive place with mental illness, it reinforces the stigma that the people with mental illness are doing something wrong. It places blame on them when we lock them into a place and don’t allow them to have agency. When we make them earn entertainment, visits, and phones, we tell them that they have control over their illness and they will be rewarded when they get over their illness. They teach them all kinds of coping skills and behavioral modifications, and cognitive thinking exercises, but none of them say out loud that it fucking sucks to be sick. None of them tell the children that they didn’t do anything wrong to be there, that mental illness is a relentless, silent serial killer who could strike anyone at any time because the brain is a complex organ that we know little about. None of them tell the kids they can be ill and rest be taken care of because they should buck up and make better choices. They should get up and feel better and be happy and not want to die because this is what is expected in our world.
Well fuck that. Fuck trying to say that mental illness is a choice. Fuck punishing people for being sick. Fuck the stigma that people with mental illness have done something terrible or are making bad choices. Fuck it all. There have to be better ways to treat mental illness. There ARE better ways to treat mental illness. My daughter finally ended up at the Eating Recovery Center in Chicago, where nothing was punitive. The patients were treated as patients, not inmates. They were given agency from day one and did not have to EARN rights or privileges. They were allowed to process what they were going through and not just learn skills to push the feelings away or aside. To this day, we know this is what truly saved our daughter’s life and helped her recover from her devastating illness.
I wish the same place existed for my mother, who ended her life after a long battle with depression in May 2021.
She deserved better.
We all deserve better.
Let’s work together to end the stigma, treat the illness as an illness, and work to understand how to care for the mentally ill with compassion, love, and understanding.
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide or mental illness, help is available. Please reach out to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988—trained counselors are available 24/7 to provide support and guidance. You’re not alone.
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