May 18: May is the cruelest month of all

By RICK EANES
Published: May 18, 2008

T.S. Eliot told us in “The Waste Land” that April is the cruelest month, and he may have been right. But for the mentally ill, the cruelest month of the year is May — National Mental Health month.
I realize that I should strike into a paean about how the mentally ill are not treated fairly by society, or that in the United States, there are more than 20 million mentally ill people, or in Virginia, 20 percent of all households are affected by mental illness.
But we are more than the shabbily dressed, smelly man that mumbles to himself as he waits in line. For any parent, the aforementioned scenario is frightening. Nevertheless, there are more than 100,000 of us in Virginia. We cannot all be in grocery store lines. We cannot all be in jail. We cannot all be on a prayer list.
So maybe, just maybe, it is time to look and see us for what we are.
We are better than you are. None save the mentally ill will understand that statement, but I will explain. A great myth in mental health is that we long to be as you are. There could not be greater folly. Every day we must be more than you are. To rise from the bed is no great task for most. Nonetheless, the mentally ill know that there are days, months and possibly even years where the clarion call to rise and shine goes unanswered. We freely take medications that have side effects ranging from a dry mouth to sexual side effects to tremors that are not reversible. We may fly into rages and frighten people.
Still, how different are we from others?
You may know that many of the mentally ill have a drug problem, superimposed over mental illness. I know firsthand, for you learn early in an abusive life that alcohol provides a release. Even though you are sometimes gut-wrenchingly sick, you know it is a palliative of great value, for it aids you as you strive to cope.
Many of the mentally ill were, such as myself, made through verbal and physical abuse. Still others have impairments of thought through accident, through drug use, through fetal alcohol syndrome and, yes, some are just born mentally ill.
Consider yourself, consider your children, consider your relatives and make them one of us. They need services but they have no money or little money. The experts have told them what they need, but they can’t afford the help.
I say that May is the cruelest month for the mentally ill, for much will be said and written. This information is designed to satisfy those that are not mentally ill. More than likely, statistics will be brought forth and they will read we had this much last year and now we have only that much.
The governor recently signed mental health legislation. This means that it will be easy for someone to be committed, but the person cannot as easily discharge himself from a hospital as before.
A great truth concerning this legislation is that none has, to date, addressed what happens if a person with a weapon is willing to sacrifice his or her life. If that’s the case, then there is nothing able to protect a single soul.
Certainly, the Virginia Tech massacre caused people to cry out and demand that something be done. We do not have a voice, but something has been done, and we have been ignored. Our cries are silent, for they are inward.
Imagine, for a moment, that you are in a large hole. The hole is really a chasm so large, in fact, that you have no hope of ever climbing out. As all would do, you cry out for help. When that does not work, you scream at the top of your lungs. None has heard either cry. You now are desperate; you have no energy, no will to even give the occasional shout. Inwardly you scream and inwardly you imagine rescue. It is inwardly you will live out the last moments of being alive.
This is the mentally ill — needing help but having been turned down too many times. All our anger and demands for action take place inside. We have come to appreciate that we are the next highway expansion or the next raise given by the state to its employees.
The month of May more than half gone and the state’s only offer of help is a program that governs commitment procedures and the voluntary discharge of a patient from a psychiatric institute — and purports to increase campus safety.
May is the cruelest month, for many times the mentally ill have been told to buy bread and wait and someone would come and help them. Time passes, the birds eat the bread and, like any dressed-up, stood-up person, they waited. For some time, they believed a new day had come. It has not — and 20 percent of Virginia suffers.
Our goal is that you see us and hear us when you pass by the chasm. We, too, wish to become, in a world of equality, one of the more equal. In the Bible, Job cries out into the blackened void, where now is my hope? It is the same question hundreds of thousands of us will ask during the merry month of May — our cruelest 31 days of the year.
Eanes lives in Danville