Taking Aim Together

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AVOIDING THE RACE

It took five hospitalizations in as many years and an arrest before Dylan Abraham’s condition stabilized enough for treatment to take hold.

When he was diagnosed in 1974, the idea of schizophrenia being a brain disease rather than a behavior problem was still in its infancy. His doctors still adhered to Freudian theory, and peppered him with questions about his feelings.

“After three days in an interrogation room when I was in jail, I couldn’t handle any more questions, so there was friction with the doctors,” he recalled. Family therapy also failed.

“My parents were divorced, so there was tension. And my father didn’t understand anything about mental illness. It was stressful, and it made things worse.

“A lot of people were still thinking that bad parenting caused schizophrenia. I was aware that my mother was being accused of being a ‘schizo-genic-frenic’ mother. A lot of women in the ’60s and ’70s were getting slammed with that label, and that was very upsetting to me. Why would a mother try to make her own child sick?”

There were bright spots as well.” Some of my happiest memories are from the (psych ward) at Madison General. I was 18, and the staff was young and idealistic. I could relate to them much better than I could to the older doctors. One of the guys on the staff, who was about 25, acted like my big brother. … The young people on the staff were listening to the same music I was. They were treating me like a person, and the older doctors weren’t.”

After 10 weeks of medication and the sanctuary of the psych ward, Abraham’s doctors pronounced him cured and took him off medication.” My doctor was adamant that I go to college full-time and move into a dorm.”

At first, Dylan pulled straight A’s at the University of Wisconsin, while taking part in martial arts and sports. Near the end of the semester, though, “everything fell apart,” he said. The chorus of well-intentioned people insisting he make a beeline from psych ward to college didn’t help either, he now believes.

“There were too many cooks in the kitchen, getting on my case and telling me what to do. I was only 20 and I wanted to take my time, and do what I pleased. What was the rush? Getting well is not a race. But it had become a race. The doctors felt I had to get fixed as fast as possible.”

In time, things fell into place. Dylan has traveled internationally, doing public speaking and writing on mental illness, often with his mother, Nancy, who was one of the founding members of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. He works in crisis intervention at a mental health center, helping other consumers. And he has, since he was in his 20s, been part of a community support team called PACT.

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“It’s like a 24-hour-a-day, 365-days-a-year psych ward, without walls,” said Dylan, who now lives in a condo he owns and has not been hospitalized in 18 years. “(PACT) knows everything that’s going on with me, even if I have the flu, which can trigger symptoms.”

He attributes much of his success to a psychiatrist who has an excellent understanding of psychoactive medicine, and changes prescriptions quickly if he notices something going wrong.

“He picks up problems before they get big,” Dylan said.” He compliments me on my successes. He told me he likes the way I never complain about my clients at work, and he admires my consistent, structured routines. He’ll say things like, ‘This is the best I’ve seen you look in a while.’ He listens to what I say, and he knows what I want to do with my life, which is to help end the stigma of mental illness. He treats me like a friend.”

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