Broken
We're great at fixing broken bones and failing organs, but not so great at broken souls and troubled minds.
A few years ago, I wrote a column for the Idaho State Journal, “Nicky,” about a local street character, an elderly woman, who’d managed to run afoul of the legal system because of her frequently inappropriate behavior, typically involving protesting things that she didn’t like. I still see her at least once a week, holding up signs on some street corner and yelling at passersby.
In that column, I questioned the local judge who was handling the case and expressed sympathy for the family of the woman in question, who were at their wits end. I know firsthand how tough it is to deal with those close to you who are in the grips of mental illness and/or substance abuse because I’ve had a front-row seat for much of my life. I have endless empathy for anyone dealing with anything like this.
The judge in the case reached out to me, and we are now good friends. The woman’s friends thanked me for giving a hoot. A small cabal of Journal readers who don’t like my views were typically critical of why I’d care so much about “Nicky” when I was obviously a bad person. This, I think, says more about them than it does about me. I give a hoot about people in need without regard to anything other than the fact that they need something that I might be able to help them with.
I know that’s not the world that we currently inhabit, but I’m old-school that way.
Modern medical science is nothing short of a miracle. In my lifetime, we’ve managed to extend the average lifespan in this country by almost two decades. Better yet, we’ve managed to vastly improve the quality of life for most of those years. When my grandfather was 67, he was a very old man who was barely mobile. I’m considering riding my bicycle across the country next year, and I’m nothing special.
But as good as we are these days at addressing and treating physical ailments, aging, and the like, we are equally bad at addressing mental health. We're great at fixing broken bones and failing organs, but not so great at fixing broken souls and troubled minds. The damage from this is immense.
There is nothing quite like caring for someone who is in the grips of a mental health crisis or suffers from substance abuse. It’s often like being a character in a Kafka novel, with days and nights filled with the surreal. Though mental illness and substance abuse are different in many ways, they share one thing in common: those so ensnared rarely have any idea that the fault is not in their stars. If you are close to them, the fault is almost always yours. It’ll give you a guilty complex that puts all of Catholicism to shame. And it drains your soul, day by day, from good health to barely working on life support.
There is a line in One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest where one of the characters, Chief Bromden, talks about his alcoholic father: “The last time I seen my father, he was blind and diseased from drinking. And every time he put the bottle to his mouth, he don't suck out of it, it sucks out of him.” Truer words were never spoken.
The worst is when you think that someone suffering from a mental crisis has turned the corner and that whatever new thing is being tried is working. You get sucked into this hard because you want to believe so badly. Then the progress slows and stops, and you’re right back where you were. There is nothing in the human experience more soul-crushing than watching someone that you care about fall back into a hole when you thought that you had them in both hands and were about to pull them out.
The fact of the matter is that many mental health issues go unrecognized and/or undiagnosed until it’s too late to do much about them. The same is true with substance abuse. When you wind up in jail or a treatment facility after having an addiction to, let's say, opiates for many years, you are kind of screwed. Even if you manage to get yourself clean and healthy, something that most of us would cheer for, there’s the path of personal wreckage you’ve left behind. The latter is often far more difficult to address without the benefit of a time machine. These, unfortunately, do not exist.
Nicky is still out there, raging at stupors and vapors. She’s there because, except in very unusual circumstances, one may not compel a functioning adult to seek permanent treatment for ongoing mental health issues. As long as one is an adult and does not present an immediate threat of physical harm to others, they are free to live out where the buses don’t run for as long as they’d like. They just about have to kill someone to be forced into treatment. And if you are a person who cares for them, sometimes that would be more merciful.
I don’t know what to do about any of this. I know it’s a problem. Further, I know it’s a widespread problem that’s getting worse. I also know that most of the rest of the world doesn’t care about anyone else’s mental health until it lands on their doorstep in a manner they cannot ignore.
Worse, I know some people who are perfectly fine with others in the throes of mental health issues and substance abuse because they are easily exploitable. There are even those who claim that substance abuse, homelessness, and mental health crises fall along the spectrum of valid lifestyle choices. I’m as sure as I need to be that none of those people ever got out of the house just before being gassed to death in a failed suicide attempt.
So I’ll continue to donate money to cancer and heart research, hospitals for children, and the like. These organizations all do great work. But can we please figure out a way to get people whose injuries don’t show up on x-rays the help they need as well?
Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth
Nice column. I met Nicky years ago when we both participated in mountain bike races in SE idaho. I didn't see her for years but then encountered her again here or there in Pocatello. I've had several lengthy discussions with her in grocery stores or on sidewalks. She's very intelligent and consistently passionate about things she considers important. I cheered for her many times as she made her opinions known at city council meetings. Nicky's resolve is impressive as she navigates the needless, ridiculous, obstacles put in her way by the mayor just to have two minutes to make a topical Pocatello point. Actually, she ran enough circles around the Pocatello mayor that usually it was obvious who had the mental edge. A question I've had many times is this: Why does Nicky spend so much time and energy making brilliant two minute comments to an uninterested mayor who has no basic respect?