Under Threat

Freshman biochemistry major, 19.

"For years, I stayed up late at night in secret, hunched over my desk in the wee hours of the morning with the lights off and a tiny flashlight clenched between my teeth so my father wouldn’t see the light under my door. I realized that the only way to meet expectations was to skip the sleep and just will myself not to be bipolar in the morning."

Even as a young child, I understood that there was something unusual about my aunt, and it wasn’t something good. There were a couple incidences that stand out in my memory, but most of this impression stemmed from the way my family spoke about her. While of course they never said it in so many words, they made it clear enough that even a young child could pick up: she was a burden, unreliable, a disappointment.

Eventually I learned that she had bipolar disorder, which meant that she suffered alternatingly between periods of depression and mania and had to take drugs to manage it. I learned that most of those memorable incidences were occasions when her meds were being changed and weren’t quite right yet. I learned that this was something that would be with her for the rest of her life and had in some ways ruined her life. It took me much longer to learn that the traits my family treated as character defects were actually symptoms outside of her control.

My father used to use his sister as a terrifying example of what would happen to me if I failed to take care of my mental health. He lectured me throughout all of middle school and high school about getting enough sleep, and he made the consequences of failing to do so sound horrific. He pointedly reminisced about how my aunt used to be a high-achieving student like myself, and then she changed so much—and not for the better. However, “mental health” was never introduced as an acceptable excuse for sub-par academic performance, which was unsurprising in a house where we were expected to go to school even when physically ill.

While I was thoroughly distressed by the possibility of becoming like my aunt, I couldn’t just leave my homework unfinished because bedtime had rolled around. I am a high-achieving student, your typical brainiac with (so I thought at the time) nothing else at all going for her. So for years, I stayed up late at night in secret, hunched over my desk in the wee hours of the morning with the lights off and a tiny flashlight clenched between my teeth so my father wouldn’t see the light under my door. I realized that the only way to meet expectations was to skip the sleep and just will myself not to be bipolar in the morning.

Despite my unrealistic approach to mental health care, I’ve been fortunate—I haven’t developed any sort of mental illness yet, although I still live in fear that I will. But my little sister has been much less fortunate. She was diagnosed with an eating disorder and depression several months ago, and I expect she’s been met with more disappointment from our father than understanding. Their relationship, while never particularly close, has degenerated considerably since then. She hates being at home and has distanced herself from family and peers. She’s having tremendous difficulty keeping up with schoolwork, especially since other chronic health conditions compound the problem by frequently keeping her out of class. I feel powerless to do anything for her, and I suspect that sense of powerlessness is common among the relatives of those struggling with mental illness. Because really, what can we do?