Mental Illness Sucks, or, the Shame of a Broken Leg

I'm a fan, Tanner, but you're in the grasp of a Utah Man!

Recently BYU's quarterback Tanner Mangum bravely announced that he has had personal struggles with mental illness, and that he meets regularly with a counselor to help him with his depression. Understand this: that same kid, who three months after returning from an LDS mission to Chile and threw that hail-mary to beat Nebraska, receives psychotherapy. And takes anti-depressants. It is refreshing to hear someone use their influence in this way, and it is becoming more common.

News of unfortunate events are also becoming more common. Mental illness causes people to do some, well, crazy things. Just check the news.

Lots of suicides are attributed to mental illness, most recently Soundgarden's Chris Cornell. Many others like Billy Joel, Drew Carey, Owen Wilson, Drew Barrymore and Halle Berry have made attempts. Olympian Suzy Favor Hamilton's manic depression was manifested in her becoming a Vegas call girl. She also had severe anxiety and an eating disorder. (Her fascinating story is here.) It seems that folks with mental illness can't just have one problem, they come in bunches.

My family has been affected by mental illness, and it sucks. Our kid has been through the ringer, as have the rest of us, with lots of doctors, in-patient care, intensive outpatient therapy, different diagnoses, tons of meds. . . the works. Unfortunately, our experience is not unique.

While we all acknowledge that we want mental illness to be viewed in the same way as a broken leg, we are still pretty far off from having that perspective. There remains a heavy stigma, largely due to the symptoms being more than just a limp.

I am not even close to being an expert, but I am not a newby either. Here are a few things I would tell someone in our family's situation, five years ago:

Happy wife, happy life. That is significantly amplified in this situation. Prioritizing marriage over parenting will not only improve parenting, but will bulletproof a marriage. Putting aside my judgment and pretty much automatically supporting my wife's direction, specifically for this child, has been key. This is not abdicating as a parent, but prioritizing as a spouse.

Don't blame yourself. While it would be good to catch mental illness early, and get treatment as soon as possible, how the heck can young parents recognize the signs? I don't remember it being covered while sleeping through Psych 101 back in college. Just remember that if you'd have known then what you know now, you would have acted differently.

People will judge you. Even your friends and family will make incorrect assumptions about your parenting. Get over it, they opine in ignorance, like you once did about others. Besides, you got bigger fish to fry than a few Chatty Cathies.

Lots of people are experts. You will get unsolicited advice from many, many people, regardless of their experience. Suck it up and listen, it comes from a place of love. And when it doesn't, stay classy.

Love within structure. Don't be a doormat, set boundaries that both maintain happiness and allow progress to be made. Rules are critical.

Develop a sense of humor. Call it gallows humor or whatever, but there is something to be said about comic relief. It helps us compartmentalize, which is critical. (I joke that we've had eight 5150s- one more gets us a set of steak knives.)

You will be a better person. Adversity refines. When the adversity is shared within a marriage, that marriage is refined. (Every parent should have the benefit of this experience!)

God did not do this to you. A loving father puts people in the best situations for their collective benefit. He does not make one person suffer so that another may grow. Don't ask why God did this to you, but rather what you can gain from the experience.

People will disappoint you. It is a bummer when there appears to be a lack of support from people and places you'd think would offer it, but that will stem from their ignorance, awkwardness or not knowing how to help. Not that there is an expectation, but sometimes you will wonder, "Where's the love?" (One time, when an ambulance, fire engine and two police cars rolled up with lights flashing in response to a suicide attempt, every neighbor came out to watch. But none came to check on us. Maybe we needed to have been better neighbors!)

People will love you.  But it is pretty sweet experiencing true love and concern, many times from unanticipated people. Those are unexpected, but wonderful, blessings.

It is not uncommon. It is mind-blowing how many people you know that have been touched by mental illness. Seriously, they will come out of the woodwork.

Departure from values. Not sure what to say here. Being too strict or too religious or too something else will for some reason become one of the perceived sources of mental illness issues; and your kid may choose a path different than their upbringing. I'm still trying to figure this one out.

Gratitude. Balancing the books makes you notice and appreciate the other side of the ledger. While you pray daily for progress, you will also give thanks at the many other things with which you will have been blessed.

Trying to navigate mental illness is just like any other difficult, rotten, confusing, heartbreaking, soul crushing thing. The secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.