A Story of Hope

What is unusual about this woman, my mother, that makes me want to share her story with others?

Raised on a farm in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, Kate never quite fit the typical image of a quiet, proper and demure Pennsylvania Dutch girl. Unlike her two sisters, she was outspoken, assertive and mischievous, qualities not admired in a young woman at that time. She questioned why they had to sweep the sidewalk when the rain would clear it anyway, and why they had to keep the house so clean.

After completing college with a degree in nutrition, having a brief career as a county extension agent, marrying and having five children (I am the middle child), Kate spent 8 years of her life, from the age of 37 to age 45 in a state mental institution. She was diagnosed with severe and incurable manic depression.

Before the hospitalization, our family life was nearly idyllic. Ma had left behind her career to spend full time engaging her family in a variety of activities from gardening and raising chickens to sewing and cooking. She supported and encouraged activity, creativity and individuality. I will never forget the homemade french fries and fried dough that warmed us on cold winter days. Even though her hospitalization began when I was eight years old, she left with me a rich array of skills I have used all my life and a love for the natural world which has sustained me through many hard times.

Sometimes when we went to visit, she was in a very severe depression, thin and unkempt. She pulled her hair back severely and always wore the same clothes. She hardly knew we were there. She would repeat over and over words we didn't understand while she walked in circles, wringing her hands and crying. At other times she was very exuberant, laughing and talking loudly, behaving in a manner that was bizarre and embarrassing.

Her doctors told us to forget about her, that she was incurably insane and would never get well. We (her five children) went to visit her every Saturday, even after the doctors told us not to come anymore. When she had her first episode of deep depression, she had no support. I am not sure anyone knew how to give her the kind of support she desperately needed. Close family members lived far away. My father was away for weeks at a time working on the railroad. We lived in a rural setting and the task of caring alone for five small children may have overwhelmed her. She had no opportunity to get together with other women.

I often wonder how she might have responded when that first depression set in, if, instead of being taken off to the hospital and isolated from the people who loved her and the world she knew, she had been surrounded with loving caring friends and family members. They could have taken over her responsibilities for a while, perhaps someone could have even taken her on a vacation. Suppose they had just sat with her, listened to her, and held her while she cried. Instead she was separated from the few people she did have in her life. In the hospital, no efforts were made to encourage patients to support each other. And there was little staff available to give support to the multitudes of patients.

As a child I always thought it was my fault my mother got sick. I didn't know what I had done to cause her illness but I thought that if I said the right thing to her she would get well and stay well. The only trouble was, whenever I was alone with her I didn't know the words to say.

The atmosphere in the hospital was abominable, as state psychiatric institutions were back then. It was crowded, dark and smelly. She slept in a large room which she shared with forty other women. There was only a small night stand between the beds for personal belongings. No privacy. No rest. No peace. Dealing with forty others with symptoms as severe as hers. She recalls that the food was horrid, and being the wonderful cook she was, she would known. She had very limited access to doctors and their was little staff to meet the needs of all those patients. Not much of a prescription for recovery. No one was expected to get well. It was a holding tank, a place where people were managed, not cured or helped to recover. People diagnosed with manic depression in those days (the late 1940's and early 50's), before the advent of psychiatric medications and the focus on psychotherapy and recovery, people with symptoms as severe as the ones she experienced, were expected to live out their lives and die alone in a back ward, forgotten by family and friends. But not Kate. After eight years of severe, recurring psychotic manic and depressive episodes, Kate got well. And she stayed well until her death at the age of 82, 37 years later.

What does her story have to tell us and teach us, almost 40 years later?

No one really knows why those awful mood swings stopped. We just know they did. Hospital staff noticed her moods weren't vacillating wildly any anymore. In fact, she was helping to take care of the other patients.