She's Come Undone

In She’s Come Undone the main character Dolores, cycles through depression throughout her life. Not only did she have her own struggle with a mental illness her mom also struggled. Seeing her mother struggle with the depths of depression could have played a factor in Dolores’s own struggle with depression. In my Psychology class we often talked about how depression was not only influenced by the environment but also by genetic factors. In the article Genetic Causes, it states “Just because a person inherits a gene that predisposes him or her to a depressive illness, it does not mean that he or she is destined to develop major depression or bipolar disorder. It is believed that a genetic influence is only partially responsible for causing depression. Other factors may also play a role.”  (http://www.allaboutdepression.com/cau_03.html) I thought it was interesting that the author, Wally Lamb, used not only environmental influences that played a role in Dolores’s depression but that her mom had it also showing that maybe she had a genetic predisposition towards it.

The theme that I thought fits this book well is effects from the past. Dolores had started out as a normal child and then events just keep happening, that I believe would have traumatized any child and altered the way they went about their life. First Dolores’s parent’s divorced and she felt completely abandoned by her dad. Not long after they divorced her mom ended up in a mental hospital that resulted in her having to live with her grandma. It didn’t stop there though she was raped by the upstairs neighbor Jack Speight, the poor girl just couldn’t catch a break. The consequences or changes that resulted from these things had a great impact on her life, she even went to great lengths to keep these things hidden so that no one would know. One of the most prominent pieces of the book that stands out to me that goes with effects from the past is when Dante touches Dolores in a sexual way for the first time. Dolores said “his hand reached down and touched my foot. I bolted up straight in bed. “Stop it!” I told him. “Don’t”.” (314) She was immediately taken back to that night with Jack, something that still affected her even though it had happened years before.  

My Friend Dahmer

I always thought that serial killers were people who were extremely disturbed, people who drew pictures of killing someone, or even talking about how they would like to kill a person. I also thought that they would be violent from a young age, taking joy in harming someone.

I would have probably felt the same way that Dahmer’s friends did, they always thought he was a little odd and different but attributed it to his home life. His friends thought he drank just to drown out the pain of his parents constant fighting, but I think it is more than that; he may have wanted to get away from the thoughts of murdering someone.

 It’s crazy to think that there is a possibility that people we see daily, may even call some of them our friends, could possibly be a serial killer. My Friend Dahmer, just goes to show that serial killers can be those kids who are a little different and seem to do weird things for attention, like Dahmer mocking his mother’s interior designer and even his own mother. Dahmer didn’t seem disturbed in the sense that he was going to kill people even though he had killed animals he never mentioned harming others to anyone.

 I’m not sure if there is a right way to reach out to someone before they kill someone if it is a case like Dahmer’s. But, it could be possible to help those who are mentally ill seek the proper kind of help.  https://www.mentalhealth.gov/get-help/, This website has some great info on seeking mental help. You can find out what mental health is, what to look for, and how to talk about it.

I think people don’t always reach an obvious breaking point. Dahmer’s life was definitely far from normal and the severity of his condition wasn’t obvious to those around him until later when they could look back on it; hindsight is always 20/20! I think someone’s human condition can be so different from others and we never know exactly what makes a person think or act the way that they do.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, By Sherman Alexie

I would say that this book definitely changed my perspective a little on mental illness. I think it’s clear that at some points throughout his life that Junior struggled with depression. For example, after the deaths of his Grandma and Eugene he said “I was joyless. I mean, I can’t even tell you how I found the strength to get up every morning. And yet, every morning, I did get up and go to school. Well, no, that’s not exactly true. I was so depressed that I thought about dropping out of Reardan.” (Alexie, 173) I would say it was completely normal for him to be depressed given the circumstances.

One thing that I did see throughout the book was Junior always talking about how everyone he knew was an alcoholic he said “I know only, like, five Indians in our tribe who have never drunk alcohol. And my grandmother was one of them.” (Alexie, 158) I never saw alcohol as possibly a mental illness so I wanted to know a little more about it and did some research. The article Why is Alcoholism Classified As a Mental Illness? (http://www.hazeldenbettyford.org/articles/why-is-alcoholism-classified-as-a-mental-illness) Says “Alcoholism is classified as a substance abuse disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). Mental and emotional symptoms of alcoholism exist long before the grave physical complications of the disease appear.” I guess I’ve always felt the way that Juniors grandma did when she said “Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn’t touch the world with all of my senses intact?” (Alexie, 158). I still kind of view Alcoholism as a coping method for some other kind of mental illnesses like say depression, if you are “numb” to the pain and you can get it without having to talk about your feelings, then why not?

The Quiet Room

The Quiet Room was a fantastic book. I prefer to have a book that keeps me interested and wanting more and this book did just that, I didn’t want to put it down. I would highly recommend this book to any of my friends looking for something a different than they typically read. The reader can easily picture the people in their head and the scenarios are described so well that they feel involved in the story. It was definitely not a book I would have thought I would read in an English class, maybe a psychology class, but it was such a great book I can now see why it was chosen. Books I typically read for pleasure are generally romance or adventure novels. I don’t know if this is a book I would have picked on my own, however I would definitely read another one like it.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, the same type of therapy doesn’t always work for people with the same diagnoses; I would say this this book absolutely reiterates that. Lori, who was diagnosed with schizophrenic-affective disorder didn’t respond to some of the typical treatments of drug and psychotherapy that people were typically given. I would say that this book brought perspective to my life, of the struggles one goes through with a mental illness. Lori’s struggles weren’t obvious to those on the outside except that something was very different, if not odd, about her. We got to hear from her perspective what was going on in her mind, the voices saying “to die, to die, to die” or telling her that no one liked her. She couldn’t focus on anyone talking to her when the voices were shouting at her; she worked so hard to drown them out with music, or trying to focus on the person talking. I can’t even begin to comprehend the struggle and frustration she, and others with disorders, go through on a daily basis.

 

"How can I go forward when I don't know which way I'm facing?" - John Lennon

I think mental illness is a tough subject to discuss because we never know who is suffering from it. Even the people who are near to us may hide it because of the stigma surrounding it and fear of having others look at them differently. In my Psychology class we talked about mental illness and I found it rather intriguing that multiple people can be diagnosed with the same illness but their treatments vary. Why is it that what works for one person doesn’t always work for another? We also discussed schizophrenia and how it can gradually occur with symptoms increasing over time and in some people be well handle with a combination of drug and psychotherapy. My father in law suffers from bipolar disorder, and while I was never around when he was really struggling with it, he keeps it pretty well under control with his medications.

Unfortunately, one of the first things that comes to mind when I think about what has shaped my opinion on mental illness is mass shootings. How if that person would have been diagnosed as clinically depressed (or some other mental health issue) that the incident could have possible been prevented. When discussed in the media they always talk about the need for easier access to treatment and better diagnoses; however, it’s also hard to diagnose those who don’t seek some form of treatment. It may be possible by having easier access to mental health resources that those suffering might seek out the help they need.

The poems written by Kaitlyn Tramp, especially “Lie-er”, remind me that it won’t always be easy to see who is suffering from mental illnesses, and that it will not be easy to have them open up or seek help. I know that for me, when I suffered from postpartum depression, this poem fit my situation perfectly. I was always saying I was fine, that I didn’t need help, nothing was wrong, and that could not have been further from the truth. I wanted someone to notice, someone tell me that it was okay, take me in and help me figure things out. Luckily I have a great friend that could tell things were not okay and kept “pestering” me until I told her what was going on. Even though she is over a thousand miles away she could tell that I was silently crying out for help and new exactly what to say to get me to express my feelings and get the help I needed.  I was very fortunate that I have someone who cares about me and knows me well enough to step in when I could no longer bare the weight of my depression on my own.