Committed

Part 2

by Clea Simon

Ally's concerns seem reasonable, but the issues surrounding involuntary hospitalization and medication aren't always simple, particularly to those who get such treatment.

Chrissie, for example, has accepted that taking medications is part of the deal, but she doesn't like them and she doesn't like the mental health system that treats her, she says, like a child -- or a criminal. Chrissie, 48, is part of the roughly 1 percent of the population that has a schizophrenia-type illness, and as long as she stays on her Depakote, she can keep on living here in her subsidized city apartment. Her psychiatrist has even written the landlord that Chrissie's cat, Mia, is necessary for therapeutic purposes. But the drugs that make up her daily regimen have made her heavy, a common side effect of antipsychotics and one that particularly rankles her. She also believes that the lithium she took for 10 years to help treat her schizoaffective disorder -- to calm the mood swings that accompanied her delusions and aural hallucinations -- contributed to the diabetes that further slows her down.

Now she lumbers around her apartment, talking about her early years, when she was lithe and pretty. She remembers the good times she had with her younger sister. She talks about the fruit trees, one apple and one pear, in their back yard. And then moves on to the horror stories that began when she separated from an alcoholic, abusive husband shortly before the birth of their child.

Back when she first returned to her parents' house to live, Chrissie and her family thought she had postpartum depression. "I was crying a lot, and I went down to the basement and my mother followed me. They thought I might hang myself," she recalls. The next day she joined her parents for a 45-minute session with a local psychiatrist. They took her directly from his office to the state hospital, warned her friends against visiting, and fought with her about caring for her baby on the few weekends home that she was allowed during her months-long stay. She tells of another patient who attacked her, pulling out handfuls of her hair before guards intervened. "I still have nightmares about what went on there," she says.

Since then, the system has only treated her worse. She was living in a group home, she says, watching TV by herself, when eight policemen came to the door. "They didn't say where they were going to take me. They didn't say why," she says. "They just said they were taking me. They put my hands behind my back and shoved me. I was crying because it hurt so much, because of the meanness."

Chrissie has more tales of mistreatment -- of a hospital worker who threw her in a room filthy with urine and feces, and of another who burned her feet. Sometimes what Chrissie says doesn't quite make sense, and a visitor may wonder how many of her memories are influenced by past delusions. But even if the details are exaggerated, the fear behind them is real. "I was so scared," she repeats again and again, while telling stories of drugs and manhandling. Perhaps some responsible doctor, some kindly social worker, was actually there each time, trying to calm her down, to explain a procedure or the reason for a restraint. In any event, nobody got through to her, and she is left with the idea that she has very few rights. "Psychiatric hospitalization is like being in prison," she says. "They can say you've done anything."

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Clea Simon's Mad House: Growing Up in the Shadow of Mentally Ill Siblings (Doubleday) was named Book of the Year by the Alliance for the Mentally Ill (Mass.)