The Fragile Grace of Mental Illness

Photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash

Last Sunday I had a visit with Chase, my former neighbor now friend serving three life sentences for the murders of his father, mother, and sister during a psychotic episode in 2017. We’ve been in communication since his imprisonment, and I’ve been visiting him in person every few months for over a year now. He’s currently serving his time at the Iowa Medical and Classification Center (IMCC) in the special needs prison unit in Coralville, Iowa, where he’s stable some (not all) of the time.

During these visits, I make my way through the multi-step security process with the rest of the visitors—we sign in with our IDs, lock up car keys and any other personal items, pass through a metal detector, get a thorough pat down, and then wind our way through a series of sliding locked doors. An unnerving process the first time, but now feels like a familiar routine.

Once in the visiting room, Chase and I are allowed a quick hug, and then sit at a table for two hours where we talk and do a small activity together. Sometimes we play a game of Scrabble (I usually beat him), or color a picture because he likes to have something from our visit to take with him as a memento. And we talk about whatever is on his mind—how he’s feeling, goals he’s working toward, new struggles he’s working through.

The evolution of my relationship with Chase occurred slowly over time as we got to know each other better. Since his imprisonment, he’s tasked himself with learning as much as he can about the biology and science of his illnesses, and in turn, has helped me learn about and understand them better, too. I’m now able to recognize some of the symptoms of his schizophrenia—paranoia being the most persistent—and the different moods of his much harder to treat bipolar disorder. Within this steep learning curve of the human brain and biology, I’ve also had to learn how to find grace and compassion for the illnesses themselves.

I’ve never once questioned why some of Chase’s extended family members aren’t able to have contact with him. Their loss and level of grief are inconceivable, and their pain, I imagine, must be complicated and never ending. When I wrote him my first letter five years ago, he was almost a stranger to me, so I was able to compartmentalize what he did. (Not forget or disregard, but set aside.) And unlike people who knew him before prison, I’ve only had experiences with him in a secure, controlled environment, with the correct psychiatric diagnosis and medication.

But even within this controlled environment, Chase still struggles with serious symptoms of his illnesses, and it’s been within these ongoing symptoms that I’ve found the process of learning grace and compassion to be far more challenging than learning complex human brain biology and psychology.

For bystanders, the symptoms of a serious mental illness can be confusing, hurtful, and even frightening at times. Someone can seem out of control, and display inexplicably rebellious, aggressive, or combative behaviors. They can seem uncaring or callous toward others, or more often toward themselves. Acute symptoms of mental illnesses are inarguably stressful and difficult to witness.

Chase and I have had a few email exchanges and phone calls that caused misunderstandings because I didn’t recognize when he was amid a serious mood shift or other psychiatric episodes. We’ve had miscommunications from manic emails that were aggressive and irritable, or conversely, full of odd, flowery language. Or depressive emails laden with despair and annihilation, or paranoid phone calls where he worried someone was out to get him. During periods when he’s stable, we’ve talked at length about his symptoms, what they look and sound like, how he deals with them, and how I can spot and more effectively respond to them. Despite how much I’ve learned about SMIs, it’s been a fragile, imperfect process.

A few times during visits, I’ve recognized other inmates who are now serving life sentences for high profile crimes that were major news stories here in Iowa in the last few years. Inmates who, like Chase, have a serious mental illness, and whose illness resulted in devastating consequences.

And, I recognized the complicated, painful emotions on the faces of the people visiting those inmates, the family members and friends who pass through security with me and sit at the next table with their loved one.

Ultimately, I’ve come to realize that the steepest learning curve is finding compassion and grace for the symptoms of mental illness—and sometimes terrible consequences—themselves. A fragile, imperfect process for us all. ~