SILENCE CAN BE DEAFENING
Alan Johnson
One night my teenage son left our apartment. I was a single dad at that time, and he was living with me. I knew that he was distraught. He was not himseIf. I talked with a psychiatrist who said I ought to take him to the hospital. However, my son did not come home until after midnight that evening, so I decided I had to find him. I walked through Grand Central Station, since I knew that he skateboarded there often, and looked in at his haunts on the east side of midtown in Manhattan. I had no idea where he was.
I called the police and asked if they might have picked up a young man who was showing signs of mania. They indicated I would probably find him in jail, in a strait jacket, or a locked ward, or in a body bag. It was 3am, and I was exhausted and felt hopeless, so I called Annie. She was a family friend in Ohio who I knew would pray for him right there and then. She said, “OK, I am praying, now you go to sleep.”
“But” I protested, “Even if he comes home, I have called the hospital, there is no bed available.”
“Don’t worry,” Annie said, “Go to sleep. I am praying.” Well, my son came home at 6am. He was spent, disoriented and disconnected. We got into a taxi and I told the driver to take us to the hospital. A bed had just become available. That was the first of over 25 admissions into locked psych wards in hospitals over the past 36 years.
Over these 36 years, it has been my passion and commitment to break the silence that surrounds mental illness. In my conversations with others I have found that each person who has had an experience with a loved one, an extended family member, a colleague, a student, or a neighbor who has a mental health challenge, can tell their own story. Each experience is unique, and yet all the experiences have some similarities. Most of us don’t know what is going on when we see signs and symptoms of mental illness in these persons. Most of us don’t know how to react or how to provide support or guidance. And if that person is yourself, there is usually confusion about what is happening, what to do, who to trust, and who you can really talk to without being judged as weak or “out of it.”
What has been essential to me is to realize and trust that there is a life force which can be a guide to a path forward. The worst path is the path of silence. Not speaking about it with anyone builds walls of isolation and adds weight to the burden of not knowing what to do. When I reached out to Annie, she was a lifeline for me. She herself was physically limited, moving in a wheelchair, having been born with severe spina bifida. She was a person who was wounded in her body and was a healer in her soul. She could do something. She could pray. She knew the feeling of powerlessness. She knew the reality of spiritual presence.
These days, a very, very long time from when I reached out to Annie, I have come to know the power of being vulnerable and to reach out when life’s challenges can put me over the top. Silence was not golden in those times. Hope can be strengthened when the deafening echo of silence is overcome by speaking from the depth of need. I can attest to the realm of the Spirit, to what is sacred, to that which can sustain and can hold me when feeling broken. Breaking the silence can be healing.
Alan Johnson is a mental health advocate. He is a co-founder of the Interfaith Network on Mental Illness (www.inmi.us) He is a retired United Church of Christ clergy who was a chaplain at The Children’s Hospital, Denver.