Electroboy: A Memoir of Madness is one man's story of his roller-coaster ride through the hell of manic-depressive illness. Fortunately, he seems to have made it to the other side intact enough to write about it. Many others never survive, even as long as Berhman has done, and succumb much earlier to the high fatality rate within this population of our mentally ill.
There is a certain irony in the frustrations expressed by many of the reviewers of Electroboy. They cite the book's disorganized and chaotic approach as its negatives. Yet, looking at this book from another perspective, what I believe Berhman has done remarkably well is to convey just how much his life was one lived in fear, uncontrolled energy and terrifying frenzy.
As I read the book, I found myself needing to put it down every so often just to catch my breath. This may be what caused so many reviewers to react negatively to Electroboy. Yet, my sense of this cyclonic story is that it actually conveys to its audience just a small flavor of the severe degree to which the individual suffering is just simply out of control! Yes, it is filled with alcohol, drugs, sex, bizarre world travel, and other seemingly reprehensible behavior! This is the 'stuff of the illness'
While some may choose to view Berhman's behavior as hedonistic or self centered or egotistical, these conclusions really speak to how little is widely known about manic-depressive illness and most other mental illnesses.Our society continues to hedge on its willingness to recognize mental illness as real. While we have come a long way from parking our disturbed relatives hundreds of miles away in institutions where "out of sight and out of mind" ruled the ways of treatment, even in our more progressive and informed twenty-first century, we still have some very faulty and often superstitious beliefs about mental illness.
Honestly, who would choose to live life in such free fall and utter chaos? I know I wouldn't. Most people certainly don't choose such a life. I don't think those who suffer it choose it either.
For too long we have labeled mental illness as a moral, or religious or willpower failure. Others only describe the behavior by its outward manifestations and related labels: alcoholic, drug addict, sexual deviant, thief, and sociopath... It would seem to me that we need to make some urgently needed revisions on the conclusions and judgments we make when an individual member of our world is so utterly disordered.
We might begin with a simple question pursued diligently by the search for an answer -- What's causing this crazy making? More likely than the failings of morality, or will, we will increasingly come to understand, hopefully soon with empirical evidence, that there exists an authentic organic disease of the brain.
While we have mastered much of the physical body, the brain continues to be largely uncharted territory. We still too often want to view mental illness through the more familiar lens with which we view the broken leg or the tumor or an infection. Quite simple -- Diagnose and treat aggressively! Yet, we aren't so good at realizing that we know much more about the cause and treatment of infections and broken limbs than we do about the malfunctioning brain. We are still in some ways in the dark ages with the diagnostic and treatment approaches for mental illness. Without increased voice for research funding and for insurance coverage, we will probably remain in this dark place for the foreseeable future.
The most compelling and saddening part of Andy Berhman's struggle to gain a level plain on which to live life is how imprecise medical treatment is for mental illnesses. Even with hopeful recent additions to the armament of medications, its seems they are used too broadly with a "one size fits all" attitude. Yet the reality of mental illness diagnosis and treatment is the fact that what works for one person doesn't often work for the next. Dosages need to be trialed and monitored for each individual. Combinations of drugs need to be constantly tinkered with, often over long periods of time. Some people respond to much less medication than others; some to much more than standard.
At the very same time we begin to understand just how complex treatment is for an illness such as this one is, Medical Insurance policies continue to scale back coverage for mental illness. Psychiatric time is often doled out in fifteen-minute segments for a pre-determined number of sessions -- often allocated even before a diagnosis is made. Appointments are often set months apart. Patients are given medications in standard dosages and told to follow the instructions and come back in a month or three! What we know darn well about people who are sick is that they don't have the wherewithal to follow anything with a degree of consistency. To start with these indivduals often don't have much hope left.Why bother with the medications? Beyond this, asking the disordered mind to follow the order required to take a regimen of medications isn't exactly a logical treatment approach. These folks need some help to do things as basic as take medications until they reach a point where they can do it for themselves.
Sadly, on the human level, too often when mentally ill human beings are at their utter bottoms and need their friends and loved ones the most, simply to take care of them in basic ways -- watch their medications, make sure they eat, wash -- these very important people often make themselves particularly scarce out of frustration, fear or their own sense of helplessness.
I hope that Andy Berhman's courageousness in "laying it all out there" for the general public to see helps at least a few professionals to pay better attention to those who come to them for help. So too, I pray that Berhman's story will offer a ray of hope to those (or their family members) still suffering through turmoil similar to that which Berhman himself experienced. I applaud Berhman's contribution to helping us all understand just a little more about the illnesses of the mind!
James J. Maloney
Saint Paul, Minnesota USA
