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Frank Lee's avatar

My father started having episodes in his late twenties. Could not hold down a job. Then the divorce... an ugly, fighting, parental relationship decline that leaves a mark on an oldest child at the mature age of ten.

Dad hung around for a while, but was more absent than available. He went back to live with his parents a state away. During that time it was clear that his mental health was declining to a more severe state of paranoia with more mild symptoms of schizophrenia. He was already warning me of "the others"... the people out to get him and, he was sure, probably me too.

He eventually fled a DUI charge and moved to the tropical island state where he lived on the streets for 40 years. By his choice we lost touch for most of that time. Today, thanks to Hawaii's attempts to fix their homeless problem, he lives in a state-subsidized hostel two blocks from Waikiki. As his physical mobility was deteriorating he started reaching out to his sons. Clearly he was motivated by the fear that comes with being alone in the world and realizing that you cannot care for yourself. He is 84. His knees and hips are shot from sleeping on the streets. He gets around with a walker, but probably not for long.

We don't really have conversations... he just talks. If I did not cut him off, he would go on for hours on each phone call. He is intelligent and informed and some of what he talks about is interesting enough to hold my attention. But some of it is... well... weird.

He wears headphones connected to a radio most of the time. He listens to a lot of radio. He reads a lot of books. He has pride for his intellectual prowess... maybe trying to patch his regrets for being kicked out of college for his role in a drunken brawl... a tragedy that also led to him losing his baseball scholarship where we was reportedly good enough to be scouted by the pros. He knows sports. Even though I inherited his athletic abilities, my sports career ended after high school with four knee surgeries and my business brain, I could never calculate the cost-benefit for being a knowledgeable sports junkie. He always seems a bit disappointed when talking sports and I tell him I don't follow it much. He is a fire-hose of advice about everything. The point is that he might be crazy but he is not ignorant.

Today he claims people can read his mind and everyone else's mind. He calls it the coconut network. He is stubborn in that belief. I have to gently tell him that maybe he knows things that most others don't; but that I don't have the same views.

But here is my final question. I am the oldest of three sons fathered by this man. The middle one demonstrates some of the same behavior characteristics of his father. But it isn't what I would recognize as a mental health problem. My brother is full functioning. He was married and divorced and remarried. He has a son from the first marriage. He served 20 years in the Air Force reserve. He had a career in IT. I had helped him get the training and helped him get his first good professional job... even though today he denies that I helped him. He retired early (too early in my view) because of his military pension and social security. He was always having conflicts at work like his father. I think he wanted to bail from the working world as early as possible.

But man is he bitter and resentful... has adopted a full-on victim mindset. Like his father he is prone to blaming everyone else as being against him... after him... committed to helping him fail. He is a Bernie Bro and supports Universal Basic Income.

Now I am wondering if there is a personality disorder that sometimes leads to a mental health breakdown. Or, if a series of traumatic episodes (and relative to one's innate coping capability) causes brain pathways to corrupt in ways that manifest symptomatic of mental health issues.

Frankly, I see it... people clutching a victim mentality where it shuts down their will to try... believing that the world is stacked against them... that it isn't that they keep making bad choices based on uncontrolled emotional impulses... but that others are somehow responsible for their choices or their lack of opportunity for other options. It seems they always feel just outside some mainstream of human existence... but the epiphanies of positive growth elude them and turn into epiphanies of excuses and blame... that also seem to become voices that start speaking to them.

How many people on the streets demonstrating mental health symptoms are really just people that have sunk so far down that they have given up trying to move forward? And once a person gets to that point, does mental health deteriorate as the brain rewires to help them simply survive? Is victim mentality the early opportunity for diagnosis?

Certainly there are biological and physiological explanations for the mental health problems within the population; but I cannot help but suspect that some people are simply broken by a series of unfortunate events combined with their inability to cope as well with adversity and trauma... where life is generally always adverse and loaded with trauma. Might we head off some of this mental health challenge by teaching these coping skills early in life?

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Kate Auspitz's avatar

Critically important testimony as nation and nation’s children suffer consequences of de-institutionalization and shocking denial - including by “mental health professionals” - of the reality of mental illness. Deepest condolences for writer’s personal tragedy

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