Mental Illness​—The Mystery Disease

Irene has no idea what went wrong. “I was 30 years old,” she recalls, “a working mother with two children to look after. And yes, I had some problems. But nothing unusual,” that is, until the first signs of her illness appeared.

“One day I approached a perfect stranger and insisted that she was my dead sister. I was certain that she looked and sounded like my sister. That was my first departure from reality.

“Some time later, I was walking home from the beauty shop and started crying. I just knew that my husband had left and taken the children away from me! But I got home, and they were still there. My husband could see that something was wrong and took me to the home of one of my sisters. I was convinced, however, that she wanted to kill me! My husband decided to check me into a hospital.”

So began Irene’s odyssey of hospitalization, psychoanalysis, shock therapy, and medication​—a search for a cure of the mysterious malady that had turned her life upside down.

MENTAL illness exacts a staggering toll in human misery. The U.S. National Institute of Mental Health claims that roughly one in five adult Americans is afflicted with a mental disorder. “The World Health Organization (WHO 1975a) reports an estimate of 40 million untreated cases of mental illness in world developing regions; perhaps 200 million suffer from less-severe disorders.”​—Third World Challenge to Psychiatry.

Mere numbers, though, cannot measure the pain of mental illness. “Can you imagine how it feels,” asks the mother of a mentally ill man, “to sit in the doctor’s office with a son who most of his life gave of himself to others and know that he is no longer that same person?” Too, mental illness is often a badge of shame, a malady draped with the language of contempt (nuts, crazy). It is often little more understood by friends and family than it was in medieval times​—when the insane were declared ‘possessed by the Devil.’

Nevertheless, mental illness has begun to lower its veil of mystery. Recent breakthroughs have brought about a new understanding of the malady. New treatments now allow many former mental patients​—like Irene—​to lead normal and productive lives. The following articles will focus both on these encouraging developments and on Irene’s heartfelt hopes for a permanent cure in the near future.