Thank you for sharing your views. I am in accord with almost everything that you said. Right now there is an ongoing struggle to gain parity for people with mental illness when they seek medical insurance. Part of that stuggle is about money, but larger part of it is about fear, prejudice, and outright discrimination.

As someone who as taken a rather strange and inadvertant walk in the world of "mental" illness, I mixed feelings about "craziness." I recall my stay at a TLC -- which required that I take SSRIs but sure beat the local homeless shelter -- as being scary. The first night I was there, a woman ran through the living room with a knife chasing a man who had angered her. The first friend I made there had the same diagnosis as I (Major Depression), and we turned to each other and said simultaneously: "My God! There are truly crazy people here!"

I have come along way since then. The place was run by a former prison warden who was frustrated about not being able to use more coercive methods and who berated us all for eating too much and costing the TLC additional money. I soon had no trouble seeing who the "them" and "us" were.

When my first friend of that initial night and I later went to the grievance committe so complain about how we ALL were treated, we created quite a stir. "They" tried to punish us for this act but we hollered about the illegality of reprisals.

My friend later died at that TLC. The circumstances were that she complained about pain and nausea and the staff took her to the local hospital, where the doctor in the emergency room took one glance at her chart and sent her back with these words: "Don't you think some of this is in your head?" She died that night at the TLC in the bathroom of a heart attack. The young staff person in attendance who had decision-making powers was 19 years old.

I will never forget her. No matter how old or how well I get, I will always remember the circumstances of her death. She died because she was medically labeled.

Am I angry? You betcha!

Okay aka smith I will phrase what I say differently to see if you understand my point. most importantly, my issue was not with the author---she was certainly not the person who decided to use the shocking photo and headline which accompanied her story.

Mental illness has been stigmatized for so long. If my child had diabetes and was hospitalized -I could go into work and tell my boss and coworkers--who would sympathize--

Now if my child had bipolar disorder I would need to be very careful about who I told because the sympathy isn't always there--many people are still so ignorant--I know this from experience as I am sure you do as well. I can deal with it but I want a different world for my daughter who does have bipolar disorder-

SO...when a website such as Salon uses a title such as "PSYCH MEDS DROVE MY SON CRAZY" what does that do for those of us who are trying to work towards a day when those with mental illness are not stigmatized. And they are. Please don't deny that fact or minimize it---

Because of that stigma educated people (such as salon editors) have a responsibilty to further the cause of acceptance, not fan the flames of fear. This headline was no better than something you would see at the checkout counter. This is not the first time I have seen such a headline at Salon-- and whenever I do see something like this I complain---

I find it frustrating that there are people out there who have suffered from mental illness or have family members that do but still justify this type of sensationalism.

on its most basic level, it's something insurance will pay for. on the next level, it's something that one quarter of americans have (within the last year) but europeans only ten percent. i never knew any one who was autistic (the CDC estimates 1/250, that explains that - i don't deny it exists, nor am i minimizing anyone's pain, but i can understand why some subset of a tiny number might be misdiagnosed). the most commonly diagnosed of that quarter is anxiety. but how it differs from (normal) stress or nervousness is never explained. the next most common is depression, but again, how does it differ from severe unhappiness, where you cover your head and go back to sleep instead of waking up and jumping out of bed? the next was bi-polar, which seems to be defined by "up" then "down". what is manic? absurd optimism? that's foolish but not a disease. then there are the less than a percents. schizophrenia, personality disorders (the really scary ones - the remorseless). perhaps it's a continuum of normal emotional states. maybe not. it seems to run in families. does that mean genetic? perhaps not, religion and language runs in families too. but if it is, how can it be that something so detrimental can have evolved to 25%? perhaps the heterozygous condition confers a benefit. perhaps half-bi-polar or "somewhat" schizophrenic is creative. i think there's a real need for something definitive. many children are on ritalin. maybe more than should be. but if you tell a welfare mother that welfare only lasts 5 years but if you agree that your child has some acronym disease and the pills are free and pharma is happy and your family gets a stipend forever - you shouldn't be surprised that such happens more than absolutely necessary.

I grieve on reading your article, but I'm inspired at the same time. We had a funny, odd, brilliant, talented, isolated young man at the age of 17. There was no diagnosis, but he seemed to be drifting, not able to compete in school, except sometimes when he excelled. He played the piano wonderfully, completely self-taught, painted deeply affecting works since he was an adolescent, and was personally committed to making the world a better place for all. A wonderful kid, but obviously something was wrong also.

At 17, he himself was so anxious not to be "2 inches underwater all the time" cognitively, that he insisted on going to the psychiatric clinic. On the rediagnosis (first made at 13) that he was schizophrenic and needed psychotropic drugs, and over the insistent objections of his mother, he was put back on Zyprexa. Within 24 hours, he was transformed into a monster who was urgently suicidal every moment. In three days, after multiple suicide attempts (heating unit in the bathtub, jumping off the roof with a rope around his neck, deliberate head-on collision of our vehicle into an old man's truck, among others), he ended up in the children's psych hospital, where the doctors insisted that their diagnosis was right and he need more and more psychotropic medication, switching among other things to Haldol. His intent to kill himself became more focused with each passing day. The doctors refused to release him and refused to stop giving him the medication.

Finally, after nearly two weeks of disintegration, and only because I am a lawyer and threatened them, they released him from the hospital. His natural father, my wife's ex, told the hospital that he had 24 hour coverage arranged in his home. He lied. Within four hours of release, our son was running through traffic trying to get killed. The police were called by frightened drivers (we didn't know what happened to him when he escaped while the ex took a nap). Before he was handcuffed, he tried to grab the officer's gun to kill himself, which resulted in a felony charge.

After an anxious 24 hours in which jail was a real possibility, he was transferred to a different psych facility, who thankfully recognized that the meds were the problem in his case, not the solution. He was quickly weaned off everything, but now the suicidal tendencies would not recede. Ultimately, the supervising physician recommended ECT. We were reluctant, but there seemed to be no other option. He was smart and likely to succeed in killing himself.

The ECT was a godsend. He "woke up" over the course of 6 treatments (the first had a really profound effect) not only with no suicidal tendencies but over the next year and half gradually improving each day. He become more "present and accounted for." He was in contact with the world, playing the piano regularly, even performing, getting jobs for himself, excelling in school, really wanting a girlfriend, beloved of adults (he was so very thoughtful and mature) and, although he did not have day to day friends, he had many contemporaries who cared about him.

Then, after about two years of continuous improvement, over the course of 10 days or so, he seemed to become overnight more and more distracted. We were busy and, because we were lulled into a sense of contentment by his steady improvement, thought we were observing emotional upset over a girl, a job, etc. He asked his mother to take pictures of him. The next afternoon he kissed her goodbye when she dropped him off at his dad's work, visited briefly with his dad, and came to our house and told me he had something he really wanted to talk about. I got a phone call at just that moment, talked to that person for a minute and said I would have to call back. Then he said no problem, we would talk about it later. I said fine, not wanting to pressure him, and he drove away. He left our house, drove straight to a discount store with an open gravel area at its side, sat down crosslegged in full view of the parking lot, stuck the muzzle of a rifle in under his chin and pulled the trigger. Later, we found that he had been planning his suicide for months, somehow obtained the rifle, left gifts for his closest friends and a long note of calm and reasoned explanation for his parents and friends, and the last music on his CD player was Mozart's Requiem. His explanation involved the physical pain he had been feeling in his head for a very long time.

The drive to suicide started with the administratiion of antipsychotic medicines. The apparent salvation was ECT, but no one told us that the ECT could cause or permit a relapse. We were not looking for it and were blind-sided. It's no one's fault and we are deeply thankful for those who tried to help. But you cannot trust anyone, including doctors, to know or monitor or care long term what happens. Medicinal and therapeutic truth are statistical matters, and your own child is not a statistic. Each child has his/her own history and developments. Watch carefully, be skeptical, be aggressive about demanding explanations and don't be afraid to draw your own conclusions, get multiple opinions, don't rest even after things seem to get better.

We have another very bright son who is diagnosed with schizophrenia. He has been on antipsychotic drugs for 10 years. They were horrible for two years, making his psychosis worse than a living nightmare. Then the "cocktail" was mixed better, but now the best that can be obtained is a kind of plateued ineffectiveness. He can chuckle now and then, he's addicted to television, and he has gained nearly 200 pounds.

This article has inspired me to start all over with the diagnosis of our other son. I'm making an appt at Mayo.

Thank you for writing. You never know whom you are going to affect.

TonyJ