He’ll be safer with us

It’s Culture of Care week at IU, and as tragic events such as the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., remind us, we can no longer afford to be silent about mental illness. In this light, I’d like to discuss my brother’s lifelong struggle with mental illness and my unending search for answers.

To understand, first put yourself in his shoes:

Imagine you are four years old. Social workers pull you from your parents’ custody and place you in foster care. After months of bouncing between families, the adoption agency places you with a nice couple in the suburbs of Cincinnati. They say this family will offer you a promising future.

Now imagine your biological mother was mentally ill and an alcoholic. She never breast-fed you, played with you or showed you love. Imagine yourself in your most fragile form, utterly bewildered at the fact of your own existence, and your parents are ignoring you. You are on your own.

In the years to come, how would you learn to relate to the world?

Psychologists warn that if a child experiences neglect in these crucial first months of life, the child may never be able to form healthy relationships with others. In the case of my adopted brother, this insecure attachment eventually turned into chronic antisocial personality disorder.  

People with antisocial personality disorder typically lack empathy and remorse, may act deliberately deceitful, and often exhibit disregard for authority and the rights and needs of others, usually lasting throughout adulthood. ASPD is often associated with criminal behavior, as at least 35 percent of prison inmates have the disorder.

When my brother got into his first physical fight in middle school, he was immediately labeled a “problem child.” As he grew older and maintained his aggressive behavior, that label turned to “criminal,” and once that label stuck, nothing else mattered. For people with severe ASPD, unemployment, addiction, homelessness and prison recidivism soon follow their first negative encounters with the law.

I dream of the day my brother can become a functioning member of society, but I know the painful truth, which is that for people with severe ASPD, the most popular “treatment” is to keep them locked behind bars. They are seen as a threat to society, and their lives become second-class. Our prison system does not rehabilitate these members of our society; it hides them away.

In our discussions of mental illness, let us not fail to remember those who suffer behind bars or in drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics or out homeless in the streets. Regardless of their personal failures, these are our brothers and sisters, and as hard as it may be, they need our compassion and understanding most of all. I don’t want to see my brother spend his life behind bars. I want him to love and be loved, and to live a fulfilling, peaceful life.

Late last week my phone rang out of the blue.

“I can’t turn on the bathroom light because I hate the guts of who I see in the mirror,” my brother said to me. I could hear the sense of resignation in his voice.  
        
“You have to hold on,” I told him. I didn’t know what else to say.

Is there really anything I can say? I cannot fathom his inner battles. I tell him I love him.

Is my brother entirely to blame for the life he has led? Is he a victim? A criminal? Both?

It’s hard to know.

­— bridgela@indiana.edu