It seems like an easy question. If someone becomes sick you would assume their family would gather around and help them get well.  But as we all know, mental disorders are not like any other illnesses and families…well, if you want to know how complicated family relationships can be just read a recent comment by Leslie Khalsa on my August 2nd post on facebook. She wrote poignantly about how she feels her family has abandoned her and doesn’t want any extra “drama” in their lives because of her mental issues.

It would be easy for me to dismiss what Ms. Khalsa has written if I had not heard similar  comments from other family members.  I remember a couple in Iowa who approached me after I had given a speech and asked if I could help them find their son. He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and had turned against them. Occasionally, he would telephone and that was a mixed blessing. While his mother was happy to know that he was alive, he would always end their calls with psychotic and hurtful rants reminding her of how sick he was.

From a man in Oklahoma, I heard a different viewpoint, more similar to what Ms. Khalsa described. His parents told him that he was weak because he suffered from major depression and that he needed to stop complaining and “pull himself up by his bootstraps.”

My relationship with Mike has not always been easy. Those of you who have read my book know that I lied about him threatening me in order to get him taken into a hospital rather than to jail. Later, I called the police and he ended up getting shot with a Taser twice. Another time, I ordered him out of my house when I discovered that he had stopped taking his medication.

Two sources that have helped me better understand Mike and myself are Dr. Xavier Amador’s book, I’m Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s Family-to-Family course.

As parents we often wonder if we are doing the right thing when it comes to our children and when you add a mental disorder, the terrain gets rocky. I’ve had people tell me that I needed to get tough with Mike and not intervene until he hits bottom. What does that mean exactly? After all, he was arrested and shot with a Taser? Short of allowing him to go homeless — what’s left? Suicide?

Other times, I know my fears have caused me to be an enabler.  It helps that Patti is Mike’s step-mom. While she certainly loves him, she sometimes can take a step back and see how Mike and I are engaging in destructive behaviors that are not good for either of us.

Of course, siblings have their own issues with an ill family member. I’ve heard of  sisters who were jealous of all the attention that was being shown someone with a disorder. I’ve heard of brothers who got so frustrated they severed ties in order to protect themselves.  That’s happened with spouses too.  One spouse simply dropped her psychotic husband off at her in laws and said, “I’m done with him.”

I remember talking to Bebe Moore Campbell, the late novelist who specialized in writing about mental illnesses, and listening to her explain how she never was critical of anyone who walked away from a family member. Sometimes, she told me, it was the only way for that person to save themselves because severe mental disorders can be so caustic and devastating. “I’ve see how these illnesses can destroy relationships,” she said. “No one can judge anyone else until they walk in their shoes.”

My friend, Joel “Buddy” Wier III, a fabulous NAMI advocate in South Carolina, has been a leader in stressing the need for families to be included when it comes to therapy and discharges. Not only ago, Buddy sent me a note about a  father whose adult child had been in and out of a local mental ward three times. Each time, he was discharged to the parent’s home, but the parents were never included in the discharge planning and not even told that their son was being released. Of course, the hospital blamed HIPPA.

I also remember a counselor at the Miami Dade County Jail who told me that his sister, who had schizophrenia, had seen more than a dozen doctors and literally hundreds of therapists during her thirty year struggle. Yet, the family was seen as part of the problem, ignored and often treated rudely. “But who was there when all of those others moved on?” he asked me rhetorically.  

Which brings me to the point of this post.  What role should the family play? Tell me the good experiences that you have had and the bad ones. I’m especially interested in advice that can be used by parents struggling to understand their suddenly disrespectful child or consumers who feel their families have abandoned them.  How do you mend families broken by an illness? And how do you deal with mental health experts who don’t understand how important families are in recovery?

Perhaps by sharing your stories you can help someone else avoid the pain that you went through.  I hope so. Be well and have a great week.

I don’t want to give away too much because there should be tremendous media interest when the book is released and I do not want to undercut that.

But here are some highlights.

The story is about a typical teenage boy who suffers a traumatic head injury during a boating accident. En route to the emergency room, the youth dies three times but is revived and hospitalized in a coma.

Head injuries are tricky stuff and I have been surprised while doing research for this book by how common and devastating they can be. One of the warnings that this boy’s parents were told after the accident was that their son might not recognize them when and if he emerged from his coma.  His personality might be so altered that he could be a stranger to them in their home.

If nothing else, doing research on this book has opened my eyes to the dangerousness of traumatic brain injuries and has made me wonder how many of our returning troops will have problems because of TBIs.  These soldiers may look fine on the outside, but have brain damage from exposure to explosions.

Back to my new project. The boy does eventually come out of his coma and he does recognize his parents, but his personality is forever altered and the lives of his parents and brother are changed dramatically.

Because of the TBI, the young man has trouble controlling his emotions and unpredictable outbursts of rage. At one point, he becomes house bound. Bored and lonely, he takes up an unusual hobby — writing to serial killers.

Over the next several years, he becomes close friends with dozens of infamous murderers. He becomes so close to them that he believes they are his true friends and he wonders if he might be a serial killer because of his own feelings of anger and rage.

With years of therapy and unwavering parental support, he eventually gets through this period of self-suspicion, sees the killers for the psychopaths that they are, and begins using his access to them to learn about Cold Cases.

I realize this sounds more like a novel (fiction) than non-fiction, but it is true story and I have spent nearly two years mired in the world of serial killers. Because of the horrific crimes these monsters have committed, this book is not going to be for the squeamish. But for those who can look beyond the rape, torture and worse — there is a compelling story to be read about a family’s courage, TBIs and how good can be found in even the darkest circumstances.

In the past few months, I have been searching through woods, crossing creeks and digging in fields in search of forgotten victims, including a ten year-old girl whose case has never been solved. I have felt a roller coaster of emotions. Clearly, I wanted the hero of my story to solve Cold Cases, but having heard what the serial killers did to their victims, I felt heartsick for their loved ones and cautious about pleasing the serial killers with even more attention.

Books such as The Silence of the Lambs make interesting reading but dealing with the real Hannibal Lectors is difficult.

Do we find bodies? Do we solve Cold Cases? What happens to the young man with the TBI?

Stay tuned.

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A tidbit.

I have been speaking to a retired Chinese journalist who hopes to buy the rights to several of my books for publication in China.  He is especailly interested in my books about John Walker Jr., the Navy spy, and his family of spies, and also Aldrich Ames, the CIA traitor.

For years, China has been notorious for pirating books. A friend of mine, who is a best selling novelist, visited China and discovered that her latest novel was a huge success there — yet she had never sold the rights to it in China. This was typical. Someone in China would obtain a book and simply begin publishing it.

The fact that China is now talking to authors and buying the copyright to books is an encouraging sign and also a signal of how China is opening up to the West.

A family friend stopped by unexpectedly and began to cry the moment she entered our house. She explained that her son had been diagnosed with a serious mental illness.

She asked me for advice.

It’s easy for those of us who have been dealing with mental disorders for many years to forget how we felt the first time we learned that someone we loved had a brain disorder. But seeing my friend in distress instantly reminded me of how confused, angry and hopeless I had felt when Mike first became ill.