Mama heard evil voices, but her illness didn’t define her
My 5’8” mother weighed 96 pounds when the county sheriff came to our house to forcibly commit her to the state mental hospital.
Mama stopped eating because the men with the listening devices, who spoke to her through the television, were poisoning our food. I was 12 years-old, and it was the first time she left the house since I was in first grade.
Mama was a brilliant and strikingly beautiful woman.
She graduated from Stanford with a degree in biology, with hopes of becoming a doctor. She was creative and artistic. She spoke five languages, played the piano passionately, and wrote music and poetry.
She had a biting wit!
She also had schizophrenia — a brain disorder, causing her to hear imaginary voices in her head.
As a child, I remember my father telling me to be good on certain days because Mama was in excruciating pain from the untreated gum disease she developed. She refused to leave the house to see a dentist. Her mouth would swell as if she had a baseball inside it. Over time, she lost most of her teeth.
I still can hear the shouting, as my father tried desperately to reason with her, as if he could somehow talk her out of her distorted thinking. Her disease stole so much from her — and from us.
To cope, I spent much of my childhood ignoring. I’m not proud of that. Sometimes I wonder if she died right then, would I even cry? Now, when I think about her, I can’t stop.
For years, no one talked about her illness — not even my own family.
Few, certainly in 1982, talked about mental illness at all. Gov. Mike Dewine, in his recent State of the State Address, highlighted the need to talk openly about mental health and to invest more resources in research and better treatment options.
He is genuinely committed to helping Ohioans with mental health challenges. I know this first-hand, having worked for him for nearly 24 years.
I never introduced my mother to him before she died in 2006. It’s one of my biggest regrets.
Even as an adult, I was still too embarrassed by her behavior and the uncontrolled body movements, a harsh side-effect from her medication.
After years of going on and off her medication and going in and out of the state hospital, Mama came to terms with her disease. She accepted it. And never once did she complain about it. In fact, she told me once that one of the voices she heard in her head was her mother’s, and that brought her great comfort.
Mental illness is not a character defect. It’s not about willpower or just taking and staying on your meds. It’s a disease of the brain, one that can be devastating if ignored and untreated.
I am writing this to tell the world that my mother had a brain disorder. She was sick. Her mental illness was as much a disease as cancer, diabetes, or arthritis.
Even at my mother’s sickest — when the evil voices told her to put household cleaning products on her face or when she made my sister and me eat spoonfuls of dry grape Kool-aid powder as an antidote to the poison in our food — I never for an instant felt unloved.
She was doing what she could as a mother to protect us.
No — my mother wasn’t like the other mothers. She was extraordinary.
Ann O’donnell was raised in rural South Dakota and graduated from Wake Forest University with a master’s degree in speech communication. She is Gov. Mike Dewine’s chief advisor, having started working for him as his U.S. Senate speechwriter in 1999.
Mental illness is not a character defect. It’s not about willpower or just taking and staying on your meds. It’s a disease of the brain, one that can be devastating if ignored and untreated.