This Mother's Day, mental health is a very personal story

May is a special time for me — my mom and wife both celebrate their birthdays, and, of course, May means Mother's Day. But May is also Mental Health Awareness Month, something that matters a lot to me. This year, I want to share a personal story and ask for your help in raising money for brain and behavior research. All the money donated goes directly to funding research (see link at the bottom of this page).

My story...

It was 1986, I was in the second grade at my neighborhood school, and I’m thinking it was just like any other day. In the morning, riding on the bus driven by Ms. Craven and likely chatting with my friend Jose. Throughout the day, I was probably doing things like writing down vocabulary words in Ms. Evan's class — over and over until my hand hurt — and getting permission to slip into the resource room and play a game on the Apple or Commodore computer. Pretty sure I remember using MasterType.

1986 was also the year I learned a family secret.

In our family, like so many today, both of my parents worked. To help reduce the cost of day care or before/after school care for me and my sister (six years younger than me), my dad worked second shift and my mom worked during the day.

So, as I usually did when I got home from school, I headed to parents’ bedroom to see what my dad was up to. It must have been springtime, because I can remember the way the sun was shining through the windows when I walked in. I was jarred by the juxtaposition of the sunlight streaming into the room and the fact that my dad was curled up in a fetal position in bed, sound asleep. It wasn't odd to see him relaxing in the early afternoon, but I rarely saw him still sleeping when I came home from school.

I instinctively knew something was wrong.

I asked, "Dad, what are you doing?" He turned and sat up in bed, clearly not his normal self, and I was starting to get a little scared — not because he looked mad but because he looked sad. He was having trouble mustering his words but managed to say he wasn't feeling well. "Like you are sick?" I asked. He tried to describe how he felt: “No, like I'm sad and just need to rest.”

Tears were welling up in his eyes as he searched for words. My questions were making it worse, clearly. To this day, I'm not sure if I said much else, but I'm pretty sure it was understood that he was going to stay there and rest, and I would leave him to that. But I didn't exactly do that.

I ended up talking to my mom on the phone. I’m not sure if I called her or if she was calling home from work. "Dad's sad and is staying in the bed," I remember conveying. Little did I know at that point, but she knew what exactly was happening. "Is he calm? Are you comfortable playing in the house while I find out if I can leave work?" she asked. "Yes, he is calm and just resting. He is crying some. I'm fine."

What unfolded next is a snapshot of the state of mental illness in the 1980s — sadly, it isn't that much different today.

My mom arrived home not too long after the phone conversation, but I'm sure it was long enough to cement the memory and thought in my head that this man, my father, was not the strong adult in my life I thought he was. And it ingrained a way of thinking that, until recently, followed me throughout my life. I decided I'd need to be more aware of what was going on around me. I'd need to be more self-sufficient. I'd need to be more helpful in these situations (as if I already understood this would not be the last time that I would face something like this).

After she walked in, my mom talked to my dad, and she was kind of pissed. Frankly, a lot pissed. I don't blame her. Apparently, this was one of a handful of times my dad needed to change medications and it was what I call the "witching week." Drugs for mental illness need to be weaned from the body’s system over the course of weeks while new ones require time to take effect. So there is this period of time when you are almost off your meds and just starting new ones that you are "unprotected" from your own demons. It must be an unbelievably scary time to go through as an individual, not to mention for a father who is a needed source of income for his family — knowing your own thoughts are a ticking time bomb and you aren't sure if you can snuff out the fuse if you need to. Just thinking about it scares me to this day.

My mom, after talking (and a little yelling) with my dad, jumped into action. She called his psychiatrist. And she called a couple other folks, too. And she realized the best course of action was to call the sheriff's office for a transport.

You may ask, "What?" or “Why?” But if you were to call the ambulance for something like this, they had to take the patient to the hospital. They would pump a cocktail of antipsychotics into someone acting like my dad to "help them." And the cost of this kind of trip would be thousands and thousands of dollars — from the medical transport to the ER visit to, inevitably, the required inpatient stay before he could be transferred to a facility where he could finally see his regular psychiatrist in Charlotte (20 miles away). Sadly, these hurdles that families have to jump through to work a broken medical system have really not changed in nearly 40 years.

The next thing I remember — vividly — is a sheriff's deputy’s car pulling into our driveway and my dad walking out to get in the back for a ride to Charlotte. This provided another lesson common for that time: Mental illness comes with a stigma that is hard to shake. My dad ended up having to take sick time and some vacation days from work during the two weeks he was in the facility to help him find his way back. He couldn't just take sick time — he could have been fired.

And we ended up creating a family story — a cover story — that he was on a "deep-sea fishing trip." You know the kind, where you take off for the week and drive to the coast and spend a number of days going way out into the ocean to catch big fish. Except my dad was in some location I never knew existed in a state of mind I never knew people could have. This was my introduction to my dad's bipolar depression.

He eventually made it back. It was awkward to see him again. I felt like I was "meeting" him for the first time. I'm sure it was equally awkward for him, too. Knowing that his only son was questioning his ability to father, which I was. We eventually found ourselves as father and son again, but it was forever changed. The experience left me with an acute sense of moods and people's behavior, which I still carry with me today.

I'd like to say this was his last episode, but it wasn't. He was mugged on a business trip while I was in the 4th grade, which led to a recurrence, and there was at least one more medication change that also precipitated an episode (possibly two). But, by then, we (my mom and I) knew we could get through it just like we did the first time.

The sad truth is that my first interaction with my dad's mental illness was not his or my mom's first. Apparently, this all came on when I was born while my dad was in his early 30s. You see, I don't need superheroes in my life; I have a real life one — my mom. Because, incredibly, as she was giving birth to me, my mom's mom (my grandmother) was in the hospital with a very serious illness and my dad was in the midst of his first mental breakdown. I can only imagine what she went through juggling all of this. I love you, mom.

So, this Mother’s Day, I want to say thank you to my Wonder Woman — my mom! And for Mental Health Awareness Month, I want to call attention to the fact that mental health in this nation still has not gotten the attention, research investment, or policy actions it needs. In many ways, we are at a crossroads in our nation's history. All great societies face them.

Lastly, if someone you know is struggling with their mental health, please show them the compassion they deserve just for getting out of bed each day and putting one foot in front of the other. And if you are so inclined, please consider donating to the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. One hundred percent of the donations go to fund research of mental illnesses that seeks to improve treatments and look for underlying causes. Donate by clicking below: