Borderline Personality Disorder

Your Life: Mental illness should not ‘lurk in the shadows’

Ninety percent of those who die by suicide have a diagnosable, treatable mental disorder. Even though it is a biological brain disorder, mental illness often lurks in the dark as something to be ashamed of.

Your Life: Mental illness should not ‘lurk in the shadows’

Charlotte Lankard: Ninety percent of those who die by suicide have a diagnosable, treatable mental disorder. Even though it is a biological brain disorder, mental illness often lurks in the dark as something to be ashamed of.

By Charlotte Lankard | Published: October 1, 2012

“When someone is diagnosed with cancer, friends and relatives gather around them offering prayer, love and support. When someone is diagnosed or hospitalized with mental illness, no one shows up. When someone attempts suicide, no one comes.”

These words come from a book, “Don’t Let Anyone Know” by Helen Cochran Coffey. Coffey’s daughter, Heather, was a victim of undiagnosed and untreated borderline personality disorder.

Life looked perfect for Heather — beautiful, bright, a mother of two daughters and an excellent employee. But alcohol abuse, erratic behavior and suicide attempts were the norm behind closed doors. When employers discovered mental illness, she was fired.

Her first suicide attempt came at age 15, and there were numerous others until she killed herself at 38.

Heather’s first suicide attempt was explained to her parents as just a teenager trying to get attention, but continuing suicide attempts, running away from home, decreased school performance, alcohol and drug use and health problems prompted her parents to have her committed for a mental health evaluation at age 17. She was kept for 24 hours, told that her parents were “overreacting” and given no treatment and no follow up.

Coffey writes, “Society is only allowed a superficial view of individuals with mental illness. Unlike a diagnosis of cancer or diabetes, patients and their family members don’t want anyone to know! Even though it is a biological brain disorder, it lurks in the dark as something of which to be ashamed.”

Ninety percent of those who die by suicide have a diagnosable, treatable mental disorder. Mental illnesses affect one in five families. It cannot be overcome through “will power” and is not related to a person’s character or intelligence.

Helen Coffey lives with regrets and she will no longer be silent. She has written “Don’t Let Anyone Know” because she is committed to advocating for better attitudes toward mental health, more accessible treatment and better education and support for family members.

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One Comment

  • c

    “Don’t let anyone know” is £23 on Amazon. A bit expensive even if you are suicidal. If you don’t want to be locked up in a prison cell and rejected for the rest of your life by every single person you have ever known, end it now.EVERYONE will thank you for it.Take a gun, or pills, or jump off a bridge onto a dual carriageway,or just lie down and die of starvation until your bones and fat wither away like a dead girl buried in leaves in the woods and no-one knows. Is there really any point in prolonging the pain? Title of your next book – “Prolonging the Pain.” Don’t write the book. NO-one will read it. People like to ‘hear’ about mental illness and CPTSD in a kind of voyeuristic perverted kind of way, but leave them in a cell for 24 hours with it, alone, and they will be scrabbling at the walls, screaming for help. The help that real mentally ill people won’t see in a lifetime. They can READ about it, they can LEARN about it, they can have the ‘answers’ stuffed down their throats, by the so-called psychiatrists and professionals and experts, but they will never ever receive any genuine help. That’s why so many of them do the nasty thing and shoot their own brains out. “Oh what a shame” people say. “She was such a nice person.” “She will be missed by all.” What sort of crap is that. ‘She’ was a real live human being with as much right to life as you, but you take your train to work in your new Armani suit and you have your pretzel or burger or corndog and you hold your blackberry or iphone like you have friends and people who need you desperately and yet you are the same. People all have faces. People all eat. People all wear clothes. People all have feelings. Why are the ones who are exceptionally sensitive rejected for being twisted and manipulative and spoilt?Mental illness is a REAL LIVE ISSUE that kills people. And don’t think you can’t take the blame for that. Mentally ill people do not kill themselves. They kill the judgement and condemnation in themselves that everyone else imposes on them. Take that and smoke it. ITS NOT THEIR FAULT.

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