Mental illness: Stigma starts at home

In the aftermath of the horrifying killing spree at Sandy Hook Elementary, there has been lots of renewed attention on mental illness: how to keep the few mentally ill people who are violent from getting their hands on high-powered firearms; how our dysfunctional health care system fails to provide adequate treatment to people with mental illness. 

As usual, it takes a tragedy like this for Americans to summon the political will to consider budgeting more money for treatment programs. And, maybe a tragedy like this nudges people to want to better understand conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression, as well as autism and Asperger’s.

Circling around all these discussions are yet more calls to reduce the stigma around mental illness. 

“Stigma is out there and it makes people feel damaged, lesser.”

So writes Elyn Saks, a professor at the USC Gould School of Law, who described her life with schizophrenia in her 2009 memoir The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant,” Saks said in a 2011 Huffington Post blog that she continues to confront stigma, even though she has found, through a combination medication and therapy, a way to lead a fairly stable, happy, functional life. 

Many people with mental illness aren’t so fortunate. They don’t get the treatment they need. And it’s not always because of lack of resources. It’s because it's terrifying to take on the label “mentally ill.” That identity can have pretty far-reaching consequences in terms of gaining--or not gaining—work and housing and in moving through society. Many people with undiagnosed mental illnesses fear being locked up, or are at risk of losing relationships. Stigma, writes Saks, “encourages people to be in the closet when being able to get help from friends, when one is suffering, is very important. Stigma's worst effect is that it deters people from accepting their illness and agreeing to treatment. If mentally ill people didn't have the added burden of stigma, maybe more of them would seek treatment.”

My husband has schizophrenia, which affects about 1 in 100 people around the world, regardless of social, cultural or economic background. More accurately, he has schizoaffective disorder, which can most easily be described as a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

He was diagnosed in 2001, and he’s actually a rare case of someone living a stable life -- though his stability is all relative. He still has many bad days when he wonders if he will ever feel any kind of happiness or joy. According to a University of Virginia study, he is in the small minority of people with schizophrenia who have remained  out of the hospital for 10 years or more.

He diligently takes his medication, even though it sometimes leaves him feeling sluggish and makes it hard for him to concentrate, causes his hands to shake, and puts him at high risk for diabetes and liver problems. He takes his medication because he prefers to be free of voices tormenting him all the time and telling him he's a piece of shit. The medications quiet those voices, and allow him to be a loving husband, father, brother and son-in-law. He balances our checkbook and looks after things around the house. He has been able to volunteer for his church and other local organizations, perform fairly well at jobs, though he’s unfortunately found that certain high-stress work environments bring on his most debilitating symptoms – the hallucinations, delusions and paranoia.

He faces stigma fairly constantly. Look, we live in a community where college-educated, professional couples like us, at this point in our lives, should be facing such major decisions as what type of counter tops to put into our new $100,000 kitchen remodels. I surely do envy people who have these sorts of choices to make. We might, in the next few months, be able to afford to buy a few new decent kitchen knives. 

Anyway, my husband is fairly open about his illness, but being open has put him at risk of losing job prospects or of people politely avoiding him in social situations. 

But as I write about how society stigmatizes the mentally ill, it occurs to me that I’m only just hovering around the truth. 

That’s because I think the greatest stigma he faces is at home. For one thing, he says he stigmatizes himself. As he writes in his blog: “My near-constant message to myself is that I am incapable of work, friendship, fatherhood, marriage - the list goes on - because I am mentally ill. I stigmatize myself, believing that I am too broken, too afraid and too dishonest to be someone other than a weak, narcissistic, crazy man. I live with fear surrounding almost every action, thought and encounter. Doing nothing and believing in only the worst are ways I protect myself. I disconnect because I am afraid of my feelings and this feeds my lethargy, isolation and depression.” 

What he doesn’t write about on his blog is how I treat him. He's very kind and circumspect in that way. He assures me that I am always loving and kind but I don’t believe him.  I stigmatize him, too.  I go through periods of being angry and being disappointed that he is sick. I have been quick to blame him for problems in our marriage or in our family.

I feel shame that he's sick and that we don't have certain things, decent health care coverage among them. 

There have been times when it was tough coming home after working, to find him sitting in a chair in our living room, reading a magazine or a book, usually on Buddhism. It’s the same place he was sitting when I left the house a few hours earlier. And it’s the same book. I grumble, I wish I could just sit around and read a book, and contemplate living in the moment and how the various things that scare me -- like financial insecurity or the possibility of him having another breakdown -- might just be figments of our imagination.

Not long ago, I interviewed a law student for a publication I was working on.  In our conversation about why he wanted to become involved in health care law, he revealed that his mother had schizophrenia. He was responsible for making sure she got in to see psychiatrists and get her medication. He said his father hasn’t been very helpful. That’s because his father, an immigrant who holds onto certain traditional ideas, believes that mental illness is a weakness of character. His father, this student said, doesn’t believe his wife is sick. According to him, she is  just “acting up” or “being lazy.”

I’ve been in and out of denial about my husband’s illness since his diagnosis. I sometimes wonder if my husband is being lazy – after finding him in the chair, reading one of his books or staring into space. I blame him and I blame myself for the circumstances we find ourselves in. If I had made different choices in life, maybe we could have weathered this crisis better. Maybe if I wasn't such a big, scared child inside, I would grow up, leave denial behind and live with a measure of serenity in accepting our lot in life 

But I'm defective and broken, too. I've told him on various occasions that I’m sad he’s ill. I mourn that he’s not the husband-protector I imagined him to be when we married, and that our life hasn't turned out the way I'd hoped.  He listens very patiently, kindly. He's always been good at listening to people. He knows I’m angry and says he accepts it. 

And then I feel guilty because I think my anger and disappointment can’t help his already fragile sense of self-esteem.  I know I’m blaming him for things outside his control, for example, the way it can be a daily struggle for him to get motivated. 

There are the so-called “negative” symptoms of schizophrenia. I had to remind myself of these recently. Such symptoms are what you often see in people with depression, and the symptoms cause a lack of motivation, an unwillingness to talk much and inability to enjoy life.  Most people are familiar with the “positive” symptoms of schizophrenia: the hallucinations and delusions, the difficulty in being able to distinguish between what is real and what is imagined. These are the symptoms, we've been led to believe, that prompt violent outbursts and the horrifying killing sprees like those at Virginia Tech or Tuscon, Arizona, and, perhaps in Newtown, Connecticut. 

But the negative symptoms can be even more debilitating, according to the website Understandingschizophrenia.org. 

I know I need to do a better job staying informed about mental illness, including the latest research on brain science and treatments. I also need to stay in touch with the folks from the local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI is a phenomenal group, and both my husband and I have been involved with NAMI's Contra Costa chapter on and off over the years. I took its very enlightening 12-week Family to Family course, where I received a pretty extensive education about various mental illnesses and up-to-date information about medications.

One of the purposes of the course was to help me and other family members gain empathy by understanding the subjective, lived experience of a person with mental illness.

I'm still working on the empathy part, and I thank my husband for his love and patience with me. Maybe reading all those Buddhist books helps him stay in the moment and show some loving kindness to his often-living-in-denial wife.  I appreciate him more than I tell him. He is my best friend and the heart and soul of my life.  

Many thanks to Amber Christian Osterhout, a Saratoga Springs, NY-based artist and designer and advocate for the mentally ill, who allowed the use of her image with this post. Osterhout's award-winning Gaining Insight website offers education about mental illness in order to reduce stigma. 

How your cat really -- as in medically -- could make you crazy

Now, it all begins to make sense: Why I am the way I am: slightly disturbed, neurotic and given to bouts of melancholia and -- new cool word I've learned -- acedia.

The cats that were family pets when I was growing up. The cats I have now -- have made me crazy.

OK, maybe I am playing with the hyperbole here. But a Czech scientist, featured in the March issue of The Atlantic, is gaining renown for his theory that a parasite, carried by cats and excreted in their feces, quietly invades human brains and contributes to mental health disorders, such as dementia and schizophrenia, and to car crashes and suicides.

Until recently, evolutionary biologist Jaroslav Flegr, 63, has been toiling in obscurity on taxoplasma (T gondii), the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis, according to The Atlantic article.

Any woman who has been pregnant will remember the admonition against cleaning out cat litter boxes. The reason? Cats -- and their feces -- are the primary source of T. gondii infection in humans. Doctors have long recognized that if a woman becomes infected with the parasite during pregnancy she can transit the disease to her fetus, where it can cause brain damage or death.

I first heard about toxoplasmosis when writing about AIDS in the early 1990s. It was one of those opportunistic infections that afflicts AIDS patients, with their weakened immune systems, and causes dementia in the end stages.

Many people carry the parasite: more than half the people in the world and about 11 percent of the population in the United States, according to positive results in national health screenings. For most children and adults, the infection at most causes mild flu-like systems. Conventional medical thinking says the parasite lies dormant in brain cells. But according to The Atlantic, Flegr and other scientists believes this 'latent'" parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others and, subtly, our personalities.

My husband read The Atlantic story with great interest. He has schizoaffective disorder -- a mental illness that has features of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. As he set the magazine down to tell me about the story, he looked askance at our two cats, Fluffy and Pippin, who were both sleeping at a safe distance from each other on the couch. (Five-month-old Pippin, pictured above, likes to attack 13-year-old Fluffy, hoping she'll play with him; she just hisses, grumbles and swats at him.)

I told my husband he shouldn't blame Fluffy and Pippin. If cat-shedding T. gondii caused his schizophrenia, it's likely he was infected when he was very young. His family  had cats when he was growing up.

Flegr himself is T. gondii positive and his passion for the subject stems from his own belief that being infected with the parasite has caused his personality quirks, The Atlantic said.

He blames the protozoan for shrinkage found in the cerebral cortexes of schizophrenia patients. In one study cited in the Atlantic article, almost all schizophrenia patients, shown by MRI scans to have brain shrinkage, tested positive for T. gondii. Another psychiatrist interviewed for the story, reviewed infection data and the MRI scans and concluded: "To me that suggests the parasite may trigger schizophrenia in genetically susceptible people."

Flegr isn't telling people to stopping having cats, The Atlantic says. He has two cats himself. He says indoor cats pose no threat because they would never be exposed to the parasite by hunting and eating rodents and other animals. Even outdoor cats only shed the parasites for three weeks of their lives, "typically when they are young and have just begun hunting."

Pippin will soon start going outside and he will probably want to hunt. During his first few weeks of going outside, we should just be sure to keep the kitchen counters and tables wiped clean.

Mental illness, Occupy protest figure into Berkeley hills homicide

On Saturday night, a 67-year-old resident in the Berkeley hills was beaten to death outside his home in a neighborhood described as an affluent area. Police have arrested a 23-year-old man, whom they found nearby 15 minutes after responding to the attack.

Two very hot-button issues have emerged in the case.  The first is that the suspect, Daniel Jordan Dewitt, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, his mother told the Oakland Tribune. The second is that police didn't respond to a first phone call made from the victim,  Peter Cukor, because officers were tied up in monitoring an Occupy protest that was moving from Oakland into Berkeley. 


Comments are streaming into a story on the case posted on the Berkeleyside blog.

With DeWitt's mother saying she had tried but failed for four years to get her son checked into a long-term mental health facility, debate has erupted over the nation's broken mental health system and the rights and wrongs of institutionalizing people with mental illness. 

"I can't tell you how many times he has been in and out of the hospital," Candy Dewitt told the Oakland Tribune. She said her son didn't appear to suffer any mental health problems as he attended Alameda High School and played football. But around the time he was 18, he started to show symptoms. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He would go into the hospital, respond well to medication and then get released, Candy DeWitt said. Once out of the hospital, he did what a fair number of people with mental illnesses do -- he stopped taking his meds.

“Our system is such that they go in, they shove them full of all kinds of antipsychotics and put them back out on the street again,” DeWitt told KTVU Channel 2.

The other touchy subject comes from Berkeley police saying they received a call from the victim's hillside address in northeastern Berkeley at 8:45 p.m.  In a statement, Berkeley police Capt. Michael Meehan said the department received a report of a suspicious person possibly trespassing. "The caller reported an encounter with an unknown person “hanging around” his property, and asked that an officer be sent to investigate.

Because of concerns about "the potential for violence" associated with a protest march moving from Oakland into Berkeley, the department would only respond to criminal, in-progress emergency calls, Meehan said.


A "source familiar with the case" told the Tribune that Cukor and his wife arrived home, found the suspect near their garage, asking to see a woman. They told the suspect there was no one there by that name and asked him to leave. Berkeley police Lt. Andrew Greenwood said the victim called the non-emergency line and "calmly reported" an encounter with a strange person on his property.

Cukor apparently walked to a nearby fire station, possibly to summon medical help for the trespasser. Firefighters were out on a call. When Cukor returned to his property, he was pushed to the ground, dragged into some bushes and severely beaten.

At 9 p.m., Meehan said, an officer offered to respond to one of two pending "suspicious circumstances" calls. One of those was the call made from Cukor. The officer's offer was declined because the call wasn't deemed an in-progress emergency call, Meehan said. Two minutes later, at approximately 9:02 p.m., Berkeley police received a phone call reporting an attack in progress.

Within a minute, officers were dispatched and drove to the crime scene with their emergency lights and sirens going. Paramedics arrived and treated Cukor but he later died.

With regard to the claim by police that their officers were tied up, save for in-progress emergency calls, one Berkeleyside reader bemoaned the department's readiness to point fingers at the Occupy movement.

 "If we're going to point fingers at Occupy," wrote another. "Why not also point fingers at the folks who cut California's mental health budget last year?"





 

Waking up to Crazy

As I've written before, my husband has a serious mental illness. It's called schizoaffective disorder, which is a combination of bipolar illness and schizophrenia. That means, he has some of the symptoms of both the mood swings of bipolar disorder and the delusions, voices and paranoia of schizophrenia. In his case, he tends to be crippled by bouts of depression. As for the schizophrenic symptoms, well, they have come back recently, unfortunately, sadly.

In the past few months, he has enjoyed a period of feeling "pretty good." But that is starting to unravel.

He recently started a job, working for a very nice man he used to work for, and in a workplace that is low stress and with co-workers who are easy going. This casual, easy-going atmosphere is a big change from his former job. As in that last job, this one involves writing and editing but without all the annoying management responsibilities. (Yes, the writing and editing are occupations that are in the family.)

Lately, my husband and I have been checking in every morning, talking about our respective daily "dread." Basically, we ask each other, "what are you dreading this morning? What's your dread about right now?"

My morning dread tends to involve the endless list of things I have to get done each day to keep the Walnut Creek Patch news site going--writing and reporting my stories; assigning stories to freelancers; editing their work; making sure we're not missing anything; paying freelancers...

Over the weekend, my husband told me that his dread involved some kind of document he finished writing and editing last week, and that he was worried about mistakes he had made.

In all the time my husband and I have been together, I have rarely heard him talk about mistakes he has made at work--either small ones or big ones. At school and in the early part of his work life, he was always a bit of a whiz kid, and I'd always hear from his college friends or colleagues about how wonderful and brilliant he was. He is the smartest person I know. He soared through school, as a National Merit scholar and all that, and as a brilliant boy from a poor small-town family he was offered full scholarships to Yale and Northwestern. His professors in the Communications Department at Northwestern wanted him to continue on and earn a Phd.

That was long ago. He was sick back then but he somehow found ways to hide it. These days, he's not hiding his illness. Over the weekend, he told me he was feeling dread about some mistakes he made on a document. It sounded like the ordinary sort of dread a lot of us feel about an assignment we've completed, wondering, worrying if we did it correctly and whether we disappointed people. I said, "well, you can fix it on Monday, can't you?" And, he said, "yes."

During this morning's "dread" check in, he broke down and said that he was having paranoid thoughts about the mistakes he had made with that document, that people he worked with would be really upset with him. He said he knew that his thoughts were not real. "They're crazy," he said.

But he can know these thoughts are crazy, and I can say, "Yes, that's right, it's probably not that big of deal," but he can't stop the desperate, self-hating voices from flooding into his mind. He started to cry: "I can't control my thoughts."

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he kept saying. He was apologizing for not being well, for being sick, and for being crazy.

I asked, "Do you want to keep working?"

In his typical way, he sighed, wiped his tears, and checked the clock. He said it was time to get ready for work. He went to take a shower--and some extra medication to calm those wild, racing thoughts. He came out of the shower, saying he felt a bit better, and we both agreed that we would see how things went today. He'll also reminded me that he had an appointment with his psychiatrist Thursday.

From what I understand about the debilitating effects of his illness, it can be pretty tough for people with this illness to function, certainly in a job. My husband has said he wants to work, and I've heard from advocates for the mentally ill that employment contributes greatly to patients' self-esteem and overall well-being. Work, of course, can be stressful for any of us. For people with mental illness that stress can trigger some pretty horrible symptoms.

My husband, though, is likely to want to keep going. Despite his illness, which began to plague him when he was a child, he managed to accomplish quite a bit in his life. He once told me the reason he works hard to never give into his illness, why he didn't let it stop him from achieving certain goals in school, work, and in his personal life--including getting married and having a child.

That reason was: "I don't like to lose."

You can read my husband's version of the day at his blog A Life with Mental Illness.

What's it like to believe satellites are tracking your thoughts and that your co-workers are plotting to kidnap and kill you?

Find out here, in this essay, Paranoia Makes Me Sweat, by a Crazy suburban dad, now published in More Intelligent Life, a quarterly print and online magazine from the Brit-based newsweekly The Economist.

"The controllers know almost all of my movements and thoughts. I need a break to plan my next moves. I keep my head down to avoid making eye contact. Every encounter is an attack, with teeth that are razors ready to rip my flesh. I must please everyone or they will take out a whistle, blow on it and call the attack squad to surround me. They will put a hood over my head, subdue me and then take me to a cabin and kill me."

Your kid’s brain, and how alcohol, pot, and other drugs can mess with its development

So much is going on in brain science these days: it’s all pretty exciting and illuminating.

Scientists can scan brains and see, for example, how the brain of someone with schizophrenia differs from someone who doesn’t have it. They also understand more about the biology of addiction, and they know that our brains apparently don’t stop growing and developing until we’re 25. So, there are apparently biological, anatomical reasons for why, for example, our middle-schoolers have trouble organizing all those damned pesky homework binders, and our teen-agers act like idiots. Why they truly don’t get long-term consequences of risky behavior, including having sex before they are ready and using and abusing alcohol, pot, and other drugs.

(For the record, I was a teen-aged idiot. Big time!)

If you want to learn more about the impact of alcohol and other drugs on your kids’ brains, you’re invited to attend a free talk Tuesday evening by drug educator Ralph Cantor at Stanley Intermediate School in Lafayette.

How Drugs Hijack the Teenage Brain: Do you really know how marijuana and alcohol interfere with the learning that is supposed to take place during the teenage years?

That’s the title of the talk, which starts at 7 p.m., and here's how it is described:

Adolescence is the time when teens are supposed to be working on self identity, dealing with stress, boredom, emotional growth, intellectual development and learning to socialize with others. Drugs and alcohol not only impair decision-making abilities but also interrupt your child’s ability to master these evelopmental tasks. Join us at Stanley for an informative evening and Q & A with esteemed Drug Educator, Ralph Cantor and the Stanley Counseling Staff. The talk is sponsored by Stanley’s Parent Teacher Association.

Meanwhile, middle school is not too early to start talking to kids about alcohol, drugs, etc. We all knew that, right?

And, the “just say no” approach is so Nancy Reagan ‘80s.

This view comes from a host of articles I came across while searching around for research on drugs, alcohol, and child brain development--and on educating kids on the risks associated with early substance use and abuse.

Here's one. When 'Just Say No' Isn't Enough: Try Science, from Science Daily:

Teens are fascinated by their brains, the way they work, change, and even "freeze" sometimes. The American Association for the Advancement of Science recommends that parents, teachers and caregivers use that fascination to engage middle and high school students this holiday season in a discussion of why they shouldn't drink alcohol.

Scientists used to believe that human brains finished developing before adolescence. But according to The Science Inside Alcohol Project, an alcohol education effort of the AAAS that is funded by the National Institute on Alcohol abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), new and ongoing brain research shows that important brain regions and their interconnections are still developing well into a person's twenties … Alcohol can damage or even kill neurons, perhaps altering development of those parts of the adolescent brain that are still forming.

Alcohol can cause kids to make bad decisions, develop a tolerance for alcohol and drink more, take risks, harm their memories.

Other articles for your perusal: Middle Schoolers And Alcohol: Tips For Parents , and Access To Alcohol Among Middle School Children (Hint: they get it from us! Duh! )

Meanwhile, there is a whole body of research on possible links between alcohol, marijuana, and other drug use and mental illness, particularly the use of cannabis and the onset of psychosis linked to schizophrenia. This research gets into the whole chicken-egg question. Does marijuana use cause schizophrenia? (IMHO, I strongly doubt it.) Or do kids at risk of schizophrenia and other mental illnesses use pot, alcohol, and other drugs to self-medicate, to quiet the anxiety, depression, mania, and voices associated with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses?

But then, does use of these substances provide what you might call an environmental trigger for genetically vulnerable kids? If a child, preteen, or teen, vulnerable to a mental illness, becomes a heavy pot user at an early age, will the drug trigger the psychosis that was lurking there, ready to emerge?

Fascinating stuff. Important stuff, especially for parents of children whose families have histories of addiction to alcohol and drugs and histories of mental illness.

Hmm, that’s probably about 90 percent of the population, right?

But if you're interested, here is another article on research into the substance abuse/mental illness link among children and teens:

Children's mental health, substance abuse association studied:

Research is underway at Rutgers University that seeks to examine links between children's mental health problems and alcohol, nicotine, and illegal drug use over time. It is very common for people who have schizophrenia to also suffer from addictions - and this new research is targeted at better understanding this problem.

Full moon tonight: Will you sleep?

I'm not sure I will. I predict I'll fall asleep reasonably well tonight then awake at 1, 2, or 3 a.m. and not be able to go back to sleep. And, it won't just be because the light of the full moon is briefly shining in my window.

It's something more. A sort of alertness and excitement that comes over me during the full moon. Sometimes, I'd even describe it as a low level of mania--if you want to get all DSM-IV about my symptoms.

Scientists seem to scoff at the idea that humans' moods or sleep patterns are affected by the lunar cycles. Scientists also seem dismissive of the idea that women's monthly menstrual/fertility/hormonal cycles are influenced by the phases of the moon.

Whatever.

I can't say I've been all that in touch with my monthly hormonal cycles--and certainly not as they pertain to the moon. The thing is, I never experienced big highs or lows depending on the time of the month, and I've always enjoyed relatively fuss-free periods and low-level PMS.

Until the past few years...

Oh, gee, am I making the male readers out there cringe?

Anyway, I've just noticed that I've become a tad more sensitive to mood changes during certain times of the month. Am I getting old? Or just become more in touch with my inner goddess?

This heightened sensitivity is not so awful. In fact, I have this amazing influx of energy around the time of the full moon, which, yes, does happen to coincide with the start of my period. This energy burst certainly counteracts any SAD (seasonal affective disorder) that was descending upon me.

Gentleman! Avert your eyes! Because I need to say that I have just stocked a special compartment in my purse with tampons, just in case--you know--Aunt Flo comes to visit tomorrow.

This hormonal burst of energy: It can be wonderful. It makes me feel naturally confident. My brain just seems to work better. I'm more organized, more focused on getting stuff done. And, in writing, the words feel like they flow out of me so much more easily. (Whether they are coherent to anyone else is another matter, of course.)

I wish I could have this energy pumping through me every day...

The downside is that this energy keeps me awake, or awakens me too early, on certain nights every month. This morning, I woke at 3 a.m. (4 a.m. pre-Daylight Savings Time), and I couldn't get back to sleep. My brain was on fire with all sorts of thoughts: mundane, anxiety-provoking, happy, exciting. I just lay in bed, for several hours actually, cosy under my quilt with the chilly autumn night outside me, and let those ideas explode through my head. At some point, the big bright moon hovered in view of our bedroom window, through the branches of an oak tree. It was there for about 10 or more minutes, then descended behind another tree toward the horizon.

Anyway, I don't know if I'll sleep well tonight. And, I wonder if any of you ladies experience the same full-moon phenomenon. Or, if any of you gentlemen?

By the way, Moonconnection.com defines a full moon as when "the earth, moon, and sun are in approximate alignment, just as the new moon, but the moon is on the opposite side of the earth, so the entire sunlit part of the moon is facing us. The shadowed portion is entirely hidden from view. "

Cool, mind-bending stuff, huh? Especially if this regular lunar cycle is affecting us down on earth.

A way to beat SAD? Volunteer, hike, camp in Yosemite

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

That quote is from our local Martinez boy, John Muir, who helped start the modern conservation movement, and save Yosemite and other national parks. That's where I was last weekend--Yosemite National Park--with my sister, her husband and daughter, and several of their friends from their time in Girl Scouts. For several years, since their Girl Scout days, my sister, niece and other alums have headed up to Yosemite for a weekend, usually in the autumn.

For one day, as "Habitat Protectors of Yosemite," they volunteer to help clean up some area of the park. The next day they have fun, hiking if the weather permits, or hanging out, playing cards at the Owahnee if it's cold.

One perk of volunteering is that you get to camp in a specially designated camping area in the Valley. Since a huge flood in 1997 wiped out other campgrounds in the Valley, this specially designated camping area is one of the few left, I was told. This campground is for volunteers and it's in a pretty spot in the trees, far away enough from the road so that you don't hear the cars going by. It is also within a short walking distance to a beach on the Merced River.

I was a bit worried about this trip, because several days prior to leaving, we were hit by that huge rain storm. I dreaded the idea of camping--I'm not a regular camper, and a world-class wimp--and sleeping in a tent in cold, rainy or even snowy weather. But the storm, as we know, passed, and the storm was a warm tropical one.

The storm hit Yosemite and dumped anywhere from 5 to 8 inches in the park, which turned out to be a blessing, because the rivers were full, and the famous falls were thundering down with almost spring-snow-melt force. The weather in the park last weekend was stunning: clear skies and warm, up into the low 80s on Saturday and only dipping down into the 50s at night.

It was very much like late summer, but the scene was autumnal, with leaves on maples growing amid the evergreens showing vibrant yellows, oranges, and even deep reds. On Saturday, we worked with a ranger and a volunteer coordinator to clear non-native, invasive blackberry bushes from an area near Yosemite Lodge. We did this with shovels, trowels, and clippers--while trying to keep the native raspberry plants in tact.

We got sweaty and dusty, but it was good work. And working in a place that you are visiting gives you a kind of relationship to a place that you wouldn't get if you were just passing through as a regular tourist.

On Sunday, we did a 6.5 mile loop up to Vernal Falls, which took us up those steep, wet stairs along the famous "Mist Trail." We then we continued up to Nevada Falls--a total 2,000-foot ascent.

At the top of Nevada Falls (pictured here) you can look down into the valley and breathe in that crystal air, as well as the sense of awe of being in a place that is so beautiful--but that can also be deadly.

A sign near a deceptively placid pool right before the drop of Nevada Falls warns you to not even wade in the pool. Unseen currents can knock you down and sweep you in and down over the falls. The sign doesn't pull any punches by saying: "You will die."

The hints of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) began to hit me before I went to Yosemite, and I was grateful for the chance to go there, rough it, be in nature, hike in the mountains, and get out of my regular routine. (I also got to get away from the Internet and Twitter and regular news updates about the unfolding Balloon Boy scandal. Hmm, how that story now seems a strange, distance memory.)

My sense of SAD came back on Monday when I returned to my regular routine. By the way, thanks, readers, for sharing your own stories about how the changing season affects your mood.

As it turns out, my sense of SAD lifted by Tuesday or Wednesday. Maybe that's because I had some good talks with my husband about life issues. Maybe it's because, the mild, sunny fall weather returned. But I'll be watching my mood as the fall turns into winter, and more misty, rainy weather--which I have always usually loved--returns.

If you ever want to volunteer at Yosemite--I recommend you do it at least once--go to the Habitat Protector of Yosemite webpage. As the page says, you can "learn about the park’s natural history and native vegetation from Yosemite National Park staff, and help keep Yosemite healthy and intact for native plants and animals."

Accused arsonist's apparently employer didn't know about his illness--and had no right to know

In today's Contra Costa Times story about Scott David Weinberg, the optometrist accused in arson fires in downtown Walnut Creek, the reporters asked whether his most recent employer knew about "his past," which presumably would include his mental illness and history of hospitalizations.

Weinberg had worked at For Your Eyes Only, a practice in the Ygnacio Valley Shopping Center, from August 2006 until this past July, "when he abruptly quit. When the Times asked senior optometrist Wayne Martin if the practice knew of Weinberg's "past," Martin replied. "Not that I know of. ... He was fine, and got along with all the patients."

When someone has been diagnosed with a mental illness and wants or needs to work--and can work--they face a difficult decision in whether to disclose their illness to a prospective employer, or after they have been hired.

They may not get the job, because of stigma against people with mental illness, or face on-the-job discrimination, meaning they might not win job promotions or raises.

Still they might want to tell, if they feel the need to explain gaps in their resume, or if they think their mental illness--a recognized disability under the federal American With Disabilities Act--would require certain workplace accommodations. For example, someone with schizophrenia may hear voices (a symptom of this medical condition) which may interfere with concentrating on a task for long periods of time.

Most people with mental illness probably would like to tell, because they don't want to hide something so fundamental about themselves. And, some would like to educate or help others when they disclose. However, those good intentions only work up to a point, according to a 2007 article in the Washington Post.

"The vast majority are saying to themselves, 'Why would I ever disclose? Everybody's afraid of people with mental illness.' " So says Stephen Hinshaw, chairman of the psychology department at the University of California at Berkeley and author of The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change, in an interview with the Post. But, he continues, "That only perpetuates shame, ignorance, and an inability to proactively take steps to ease the situation."

The ADA prohibits any kind of descrimination against people with a disability, including a mental illness. It requires employers of 15 or more employees to provide an equal opportunity to qualified individuals, and it prohibits discrimination in various aspects of employment.

But while employers can't discriminate against employees who are qualified to do the job, they are not obligated to hire anyone you cannot perform the essential functions of the job.

It doesn't sound like Weinberg told his employers at For Your Eyes Only. He was not legally obligated to do so, and the practice couldn't ask when hiring, according to this ADA Q&A sheet:

"An employer cannot make any pre-employment inquiry about a disability or the nature or severity of a disability. An employer may, however, ask questions about the ability to perform specific job functions ... "

It sounds like, for the time he was there, he was able to do the work.

For more information about the American with Disabilities Act, visit this information guide from Boston University, the U.S. ADA site, or this FAQ sheet from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Walnut Creek optometrist charged in arson fires is said to suffer from bipolar disorder

The Contra Costa Times is reporting that Scott David Weinberg, 51, charged with setting fires at a downtown fast-food restaurant and the Comcast cable services hub, had suffered from "recurring episodes of uncontrolled" bipolar disorder throughout his life and was hospitalized at least twice.

Weinberg had also been slapped with a restraining order, to stay away from his second wife and her family, because of numerous reports of threats, including to burn down her house, and stalking.

Weinberg was charged Friday and arraigned on four counts of arson, and one count each of resisting arrest, possession of brass knuckles, and theft of lawn figurines. He was arrested outside hi Walnut Creek home Thursday afternoon. The fire at the Wendy's on North Main Street occurred late Wednesday night, and a blaze at the Comcast building early Thursday morning knocked out cable services to nearly 40,000 people.

Whatever some of you might think of Weinberg and his actions, bipolar disorder is a devastating disease and can be extremely debilitating. And a lot of people have it. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, this chronic medical condition afflicts more than 10 million people in the United States.

I know a little bit about bipolar disorder. As I've said before, my husband has a form of bipolar disorder--along with other illnesses. Fortunately he is very diligent about taking his medication. Weinberg was said to act unpredictably when he was off his medication.

From what I've learned through reading and attending an excellent 12-week Family-to-Family course sponsored by NAMI's Contra Costa chapter, people who are mentally ill often don't see themselves as mentally ill. That's one of the symptoms. And if they don't view themselves as sick, why, they think, do they need to take meds?

Also, the side effects of some of the medications can be almost as debilitating as the illness itself, don't always work, or need constant adjustments, and can lead to long-term health consequences.

According to NAMI, bipolar disorder, or manic depression, "causes extreme shifts in mood, energy, and functioning. These changes may be subtle or dramatic and typically vary greatly over the course of a person’s life as well as among individuals.

"Bipolar disorder is a generally life-long condition with recurring episodes of mania and depression that can last from days to months that often begin in adolescence or early adulthood, and occasionally even in children. Most people generally require some sort of lifelong treatment."

By the way, the manic phase can be marked by:

--elation, happy mood or an irritable, angry, unpleasant mood
--increased physical and mental activity and energy
--racing thoughts and flight of ideas
--increased talking, more rapid speech than normal
--ambitious, often grandiose plans
--risk taking
--impulsive activity such as spending sprees, sexual indiscretion, and alcohol abuse
--decreased sleep without experiencing fatigue

Local suburban dad’s story about hearing voices gets buzz from The Economist and nationally renowned blogger Andrew Sullivan

Being Crazy is Noisy.

That’s the title of a piece by a Crazy dad that was published last week in More Intelligent Life, a quarterly print and online magazine from the Brit-based newsweekly The Economist.

The author is “diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (a co-diagnosis of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder), chronic depression and chronic anxiety. He describes a lifetime of fighting demons ...”

Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan, with the Atlantic.com, took a break from his widely read post-Iran election coverage to make note of this article on his Daily Dish blog.

If you or anyone you know has a mental illness, deals with voices, or, is, like me, kinda Crazy in Suburbia, the article is a good read.

"The Soloist," schizophrenia, and my family

On Friday night, I took my 11-year-old son to see The Soloist, the new film starring Robert Downey Jr. as Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez who befriends a homeless, schizophrenic man named Nathanial Ayers (played by Jamie Foxx), who also happens to be a gifted Julliard-trained classical musician.

Some might question my maternal judgment in taking an 11-year-old boy to see a movie that deals with such adult topics as homelessness, poverty, street life, and mental illness.

I had my reasons, and not just because, at his age, he wants to experience thought-provoking works of art and entertainment. I figured he might want to see a movie that tries to honestly depict mental illness.

That’s because he and I live with someone who has schizophrenia.

That someone would be his father and my husband.

My husband of 18 years has given me permission to disclose information about his illness in this blog. He’s at a point in his life when he wants to become more public about himself, his struggles and his successes with living with his illness. He wants to help the public better understand a disease that afflicts about 1 percent of the population, or 2.2 million Americans.

My husband has what’s more specifically called schizoaffective disorder. In simple terms, schizoaffective disorder is a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He hears voices and experiences delusions and paranoia—the disorders of thought—that are typical of schizophrenia. He also suffers the mania and severe depression and anxiety—the disorders of mood—that come with bipolar disorder. In his form of bipolar, he has more of the depression and less of the mania.

He has been dealing with these symptoms in one form or another most of his life—since early childhood, as he has come to recognize. Mental health experts talk about schizophrenia and bipolar striking people in their late teens and twenties. But more and more, these experts are learning that the onset of these symptoms can begin much earlier. Young kids, or kids in early adolescence, may not be ready to understand that the strange things going on inside their heads mean they need help. They also don’t have the language to explain it. Kids, starting in pre-teens, also are so eager to fit in and be “normal” that they might not be willing to reveal private thoughts that would label them as anything but “normal.”

In support groups I attended, sponsored by the Contra Costa chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, I heard parents talk about how they knew that their children—later diagnosed with serious illnesses—were “different,” even at a young age. One mom, whose now adult son was in and out of hospitals with bipolar disorder, said she knew something was different about her son when he was an infant. She said the way he cried was much more “intense” than her other kids.

My husband knew he was pretty sick by his early teens.

But he kept it to himself. Even at 12, 13, he was perfectly aware what was going on, and could express it. But he didn’t seek help. Why? When he was growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, the medical and mental health community was still very much in the dark about how to deal with people who hear voices. He had an aunt with schizophrenia who was locked up the rest of her life in a mental hospital (Yes, these illnesses do run in families).

My husband was terrified of suffering the same fate.

I recently read an amazing book, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. This 2007 book is a beautifully written memoir of suffering from and learning to live with schizophrenia. The author is Elyn Saks, a Yale- and Oxford-educated professor of law, psychology, and psychiatry and the behavioral sciences at the University of Southern California. She describes how, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, in between studying philosophy and law at top international universities, she was locked up in hospitals, restrained, straight-jacketed, misdiagnosed, and under-treated.

It wasn’t until the ‘90s that she started to 1) accept that she had an illness that required medication and 2) much more effective medication came along to treat psychosis.

There are some key things I learned from this book, and which my husband affirms from his own experience.

--Even with medication, the voices don’t always go away. Also, Saks effectively describes the experience of “voices.” She says in every waking moment, we all have sights, sounds, smells, and sensations vying for our attention, but the brains of non-ill people have “regulators” that help them decide what to focus their attention on. For mentally ill people, that “regulator that funnels certain information and filters out other information” suddenly shuts off. “Immediately, every sight, every sound, every smell coming at you carries equal weight; every thought, feeling, memory and idea presents itself to you with an equally strong and demanding intensity.” You live with a constant din, like being in a room with the TV, stereo, and a video game turned up full blast. Add a group of crying children to the mix.

--With my husband, he hears voices that are not “real,” but that—in his head—sound very real. My husband said his voices constantly told him cruel and abusive things like “you are a piece of shit. You should never have been born.”

When we started going out and when we were first married, I didn’t know what my husband was dealing with. He didn’t tell me, perhaps out of shame, but also thinking, correctly, that I wouldn’t “get it.”

He only told me about bouts of depression. My attitude then was “just snap out of it,” “adjust your attitude.” Why should he be depressed, I wondered, if he has such a great wife, a good career, and good friends?

I was very ignorant then. When it comes to mental illness, most of us just don’t get it. Why should we, if we ourselves have never had minds and bodies overtaken by the sound of these voices? If we’ve never been given basic health information about what mental illness is about? That it is ultimately a physical, biological illness—like diabetes or heart disease. That is has nothing to do with someone having a weak or low moral character. On the contrary, at least with my husband, he is one of the strongest people I know.

For us, it all came crashing down for us in 2001, and that's when I started to learn how sick my husband was. Up until then, he had maintained this façade of happiness and success. But he had reached a point in his life and in his illness when he couldn’t hold it together. Our son was two, turning three. My husband started to wake up every morning thinking, “this is the day I’m going to kill himself.”

There are many complexities to this 2001 crisis, which are, yes, too complex to go into right now. Simple version: there was a breakdown, two hospitalizations, an incarceration, and consultations with a series of mental health experts—psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage and family counselors, researchers at Stanford University. This process, and his current psychiatrist, led him to his current diagnosis, his course of treatment, and his “cocktail” of medications, some of which I don’t think were available 10 years ago.

One point that Saks accurately makes, which was the case with my husband: “A common misunderstanding is that people with schizophrenia are wildly psychotic all the time. Most, like myself, are not. When I am symptomatic, I suffer from delusions and hallucinations, and my thinking becomes confused and disorganized.”

The psychosis can float in and out, unexpectedly, even at different points in the day. The fact that psychosis is not constant means that some people can seem to function quite well and at high levels at school, work, and in personal relationships—like Elyn Saks or my husband.

And like Saks, my husband was very determined to accomplish certain things in life. He did well in school and in college, where we met. He studied at a top US university and had professors who wanted him to stay in school and earn a PhD in his field.

But he had other ideas. He wanted to travel, live overseas, see the world. He also wanted to do community service, and he wanted to fall in love, get married, become a father.

So, he worked hard to keep his voices in check, his outer mask of mental wellness on display. Maintaining that façade of sanity was pretty exhausting, but he had to do it, he says, because “I don’t like to lose.”

The cocktail of medications he now takes allows him to function pretty well—with some irksome side effects (fatigue, weight gain, shakes in his hands). Still, I am lucky that he is one of those people with mental illness who is able to comprehend that he is sick—many are not able to make this connection—and that he wants to do what’s necessary to stay as well as possible, for as long as possible.

He now works in a pretty demanding job. Actually, it’s a job that a lot of us would find stressful and exhausting, because he has to deal with big egos and works a lot of hours. He’s able to manage, he jokes, because he’s so medicated. His bosses know about his illness. They are pretty progressive in this regard.

So, he’s dealt with some pretty horrific things throughout his life. At the same time, he is a wonderful, loving man, with a lot of friends and family who helped us out when things got bad. It was a shock to everyone who knew him to learn he had been struggling much of his life with such private turmoil.

Seeing The Soloist on Friday prompted a family discussion on Saturday. My husband didn’t accompany us to the movie. He rarely goes to see movies these days, he says, because they make him psychotic.

But he was happy to hear what we had to say about the film. One thing, he immediately said is that my son has scolded him for referring to himself as “crazy.” My son doesn’t mind if his father talks openly about having a mental illness, but believes that his dad referring to himself as “crazy” is demeaning, and my son doesn’t like his dad putting himself down.

(I asked my son if he minded me having this blog, Crazy in Suburbia, or referring to myself as “crazy” Soccer Mom. No, he said, with a shrug and a smile. Even at 11, he understands that my “crazy” moniker is my own silliness, though, yes, I’ve got my issues. Ultimately, my son is able to distinguish between his mom’s brand of craziness and what’s going on with his father, which is very real and very serious. )

We told my husband about the need of Jamie Foxx’s character, Nathanial Ayers, to live outside on the streets, and to play his music amidst the noise of the city and of traffic. As he gets to know Ayers and to understand schizophrenia, Downey’s Lopez learns why Ayers needs to be outside. The city noise drowns out the much more troubling and scattered cacophony of voices inside Ayers’ own head. My husband said, yes, that’s the way it can be. The voices can be multi-layered, relentless, contradictory, and confusing. It’s not like the sound loop of thoughts that non-ill people have playing in our heads throughout the day.

My husband also understood Ayers’ need to constantly play music. My husband played French horn in high school, and he said playing music quieted his voices. He also said that he didn’t hear voices when he played tennis or read. So, growing up, he played a lot of music, did a lot of reading, and played a lot of tennis.

I told my husband how the film also shows Ayers, in flashback as a boy, beginning to withdraw into his music—as the illness and the voices begin to descend upon him.

Some critics have poked at The Soloist for not having a more “dramatic” or “uplifting” resolution. I think they were looking for Downey’s columnist character to get Ayers into treatment, where Ayers would “see the light,” start taking meds, resume his professional music career, and have a stellar debut at Carnegie Hall. Or some such nonsense.

I loved how the film showed that there is no cure—no easy resolution—when you’re dealing with something like schizophrenia. I found the delicate and unconventional connection made between these two men to be truthful, and therefore dramatic and uplifting. No, Foxx’s Ayers does not become cured. He doesn’t even accept that he has schizophrenia and start taking medication. But he makes a friend, reconnects with his sister, and continues to play his music, privately and on his own terms.

Saks points out the long list of people with mood disorders, such as depression or bipolar, who have led full and famously productive lives: Writers, artists, even historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln.

Unfortunately, there is no such list for people with schizophrenia. Saks says few people with schizophrenia lead happy and productive lives, or “those who do aren’t in a hurry to tell the world about themselves.”

My husband sometimes mentions various statistics, not to scare me, but to keep it real between us: such as about how half of people with this illness can’t live or function independently, and suicide is the leading cause of death. He also tells me that, all of a sudden and without warning, his meds could stop working, and he could wake up one morning with full blown psychosis. And not know where he is, who he is, who we are. That happened with a woman he met in a support group he attended.

But he’s pretty happy with his meds right now, feel that they are doing what they need to do, and more and more he shares things with me about what it was like for him growing up, what it is like for him now. Most of all, he feels immense gratitude: for being sane. For being in the place in life he is now. That’s my dramatic, uplifting ending to this story. For now anyway.

To be continued ...

For more information about mental illness and schizophrenia, visit:

National Alliance On Mental Illness

Schizophrenia.com

National Institutes of Mental Health

Jason Montes was on meds for depression; his family didn't see the violence coming

Hours before Jason Montes fatally shot his young wife, Serena, before killing himself in his Concord home Sunday evening, he had been visiting his parents, and his father says he saw nothing “out of the ordinary” in his son’s behavior.

So reports Robert Salonga in this excellent report in the Contra Costa Times:

The father, Angel Montes, describes his only child Jason, 33, as “a mellow personality personality who was coming to grips with a looming divorce from Serena Montes. His sentiments fall in line with those of his daughter-in-law's family, who also said the violence was unexpected.

"This was not the son we raised and who grew up in the house," Montes, 61, said. "We didn't see it coming. We're completely devastated."

The elder Montes said his son rarely let his family know his feelings, but that he had grown enamored with the woman who became his wife, Serena Lesley, after a chance online meeting. They were married in September 2007.

"He really fell in love with her," he said. "We could see that from the get-go."

But by some point last summer, the two were growing apart, according to family on both sides of the marriage. That coincided with Jason Montes filing for bankruptcy.

In the shooting's aftermath, Angel Montes said he has been learning that his son had become troubled during the past year and had twice threatened suicide. For a spell, the junior Montes was seeing a psychiatrist and taking Prozac to treat symptoms of depression, his father said.

It’s unclear from the article whether Montes was still on Prozac. Anti-depressants are serious drugs, even though general practitioners often prescribe them rather liberally to anyone who comes into their offices, complaining of general sadness or anxiety.

I currently take a very low dose of Prozac, under the supervision of a psychiatrist, for some mild depression that has come over me over the past year or so. I worked with this doctor on reducing the dose because, in the first few weeks, it gave me more than a lift in mood. It made me shaky and agitated and feeling not “like myself.”

Of course, this psychiatrist and others will tell you that it takes your brain and body to adjust to these drugs.

It’s also generally known that giving anti-depressants to someone who, in fact, suffers from bipolar disorder can so lift that person’s mood that it can shoot him or her into a manic state. Sometimes, people with bipolar disorder are first diagnosed as having “depression” and given anti-depressants.

If you’re prescribed these medications, you are also strongly advised to not suddenly stop taking them. Doing so can plunge you into a very dark, tormented place.

It will be interesting to learn more about whether Montes was still on the Prozac and taking it as prescribed. The results of a toxicology test during the autopsy should show what, if any, drugs he had in his system at the time of his death.

Even if he was on the medication, and needed to take something for his depression, Prozac might not have been the right drug for him. That’s one of the frustrating things about medications to treat mental illnesses. One kind works for one person, but it doesn’t work for another. Some people with mental illness need to experiment with a series of drugs or combinations to find the right mix for them. Also, a drug that was working great can suddenly start to not work, perhaps because the body gets used to it enough that it builds up a tolerance for it.

I know someone has long dealt with heavy-duty depression, and was taking one anti-depressant successfully for several years. Over the past couple weeks, this friend’s mood has plummeted, and he and his doctor are worried that the medication has stopped working.

As for Angel Montes not seeing the violence coming from his son: Okay, Jason Montes had threatened suicide in the past. That’s a red flag. But then, from this Times article, it sounds like he was in attempting to deal with those suicidal thoughts by seeing the psychiatrist and taking the Prozac.

That Jason acted normally the morning of his death, or that the he had seemed to enjoy watching a movie at his parents’ house in the company of friends the evening before? That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been there with a close family member who carefully hid his daily thoughts of suicide and his undiagnosed mental illness behind a veneer of an easy-going personality and professional success. According to the Times article, Jason Montes graduated from high school, studied graphic design, worked for a web consulting firm in Redwood City and was looking to get a job in film animation.

Some people who are deeply troubled, as with the case with Jason Montes perhaps, work very hard to hide their inner turmoil. Why? For a number of reasons, I’ve found. They don’t want to scare their loved ones. They are afraid of being locked up in an institution. They are terrified of facing the fact that they are terribly troubled. The stigma of having a “mental illness” is still pretty strong in are society. Finally, the illness itself can make it hard for the person to judge for themselves how sick they are.

From this article, though, it sounds like Jason Montes was planning something the entire time he was acting “ordinary” in his parents’ and friends’ company. “It was later learned that while in Sacramento, Jason Montes had taken a small-caliber pistol his father had acquired during his military days. It had never been fired until that evening," the article says.

We’ve read the rest: that about 5:30 p.m. Sunday, Jason Montes called a friend in Sacramento, saying he had just shot his wife and was going to kill himself. By the time word got to Concord police and officers entered the home, he was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and Serena Montes had been fatally wounded.

I know that many people want to label Jason Montes a selfish cold-blooded monster because of what he did to Serena. I can’t argue against point, though my heart breaks for him and his family, as well as Serena and her family.

It's tough to read what Angel Montel is going through. He told the Times that he is not absolving his son, “but instead is holding on to the memory of the person he knew: the science-fiction fan and comic book collector who had a magic touch with computers and loved personal technology. ‘He's still the same person I thought would never harm somebody else or himself,’ he said. ‘We're trying to figure out what went wrong.’ "