Motherblame: Are We Done Yet?

I just finished reading another mother's memoir about her son's schizophrenia called This Stranger, My Son. I'd not heard of this one until a media producer I was working for (as voice talent) suggested I read it. Evidently she had read it in high school, years ago, and it has stayed with her ever since.

The book is out of print, but I was able to get a used paperback copy on Amazon. First thing I noticed was the publication date: 1968. I had to wonder: Have things changed at all for families of those with mental illness?

Like me, the author ( Louise Wilson) felt compelled to write about her experience as the mother of a son who was - according to the book's cover - "brilliant, handsome, gifted, and 'different' from the time he was born." Like me, too, she and her befuddled family lived through years of confusion, misdiagnosis, expensive therapy and countless attempts to fix things with talk. Unlike me, though, her child seemed to have symptoms of mental illness almost from birth (childhood onset) while my Ben's schizophrenia was of the more common "gradual onset" variety, changes appearing in his mid-teens and progressing from there. We were, I think, luckier in this regard (if there is such a thing as lucky when your child develops a major mental illness) - We had years of getting to know Ben before the illness set its ugly course. I knew who I was trying to save.

One other difference in our memoirs comes from the time period in which we raised our children. Wilson and her family tried desperately for years to find out why their son Tony was so "different", while their other three children seemed fine. We, too, sought answers for years. In the 1960's , however, Wilson was much more of a victim of something that, thankfully, has finally begun to wane: Motherblame.

Throughout her book, she reports how professionals from psychoanalysts to child psychiatrists, school principals to therapists told her, over and over again, that she (and, sometimes, her husband) were the real problem.

You're too cold.

You are an unapproachable mother.

You baby him too much. Let go.

You don't help him enough.

Your husband doesn't so enough "manly" things with Tony.

Their life savings spent, their other children suffering from Tony's rages and an uncertain home life, Wilson and her husband tried in vain to understand, to let go, to hold on, to change their parenting skills - all in an age when it was "common knowledge" that schizophrenia is a psychological issue, not one of chemistry, not an "illness" at all. It isn't until the final chapters that she finally speaks to someone who shares a new-but-increasingly-accepted theory with her: "Schizophrenia is a physical illness." And, finally, one mother can stop hating herself.

He tells her that this isn't her fault, that her son has a mental illness that is nobody's fault. Finally, relief for these poor parents who had believed that they had somehow done something very wrong for their child to act so strangely and unpredictably. Finally, they could let go of blame.

Were we more fortunate, then, since my son was born decades later, in an era where the chemical basis for mental illness is finally accepted? Absolutely. NAMI was there to help educate me, once we had a diagnosis. Sure, there were years of chaos before we understood. Sure, earlier detection might have saved us a lot of heartache, false leads, and money.

Is motherblame a thing of the past? Hardly. We had our share of therapists who tried to "fix" Ben by "fixing" me. But at least none of them questioned the chemical nature of mental illness itself, once diagnosed. The diagnosis allowed us, finally, to move ahead. Sure, it took way too long to name Ben's illness - but in Wilson's time, naming the illness did not remove the blame on the family. We could have had it so much worse.

Canadian author, Susan Inman, in her book After Her Brain Broke, talks of her daughter's years of talk therapy ( with privacy laws forbidding her access to how the treatment was going) -which she later learned consisted almost entirely of motherblame.

"How easy it has been," she writes, "for poorly educated professionals to assume that the accusations that were made while ill must be revealing deep truths instead of completely disordered thinking." And she wrote her book in 2003. Fairly recently. There is still much to be done, much stigma to erase.

Wasted years. Depleted savings. And, she discovered, so many "mental health professionals" had not even been required to study the major mental illnesses as part of their education in Canada. Is this true in the United States? I have begun to ask about this.

Still, once we knew the truth about Ben, we could act. And there were resources available to help me understand. I hope our story will do the same for those future families who will need to know they are not alone. And, I am delighted that I've had the chance, and continue to be invited, to speak about this to students, professionals, families and PAMIs (People Affected by Mental Illness). It is a privilege, and I hope to do Ben proud as I speak out for better research, more services, greater opportunity, understanding and respect - and against needless blame.

Acceptance? No-fault thinking? We are not there yet - but we are, certainly, closer than we were in 1968. We'll take it.