I Owe So Much to Dr. Levy

By way of introduction, in my first blog I summarized the severity of my continuing bout with schizophrenia and the agonies I have suffered because of it, especially during the first ten years when I was actively psychotic.

In this second blog I want to convey how fortunate I have been since the onset of my illness to have received what is today considered to be “best practice treatment.” In hindsight, I realize that from the very beginning I have been both a participant in, and at the same time an observer of, what is rightly considered the most significant period in the history of mental illness. During the last fifty years we have developed a better understanding of the nature of schizophrenia and how best to treat it. But how was it that I received best practice treatment beginning some twenty or thirty years before the treatment modalities included were even developed? What difference has it made in my life? And finally, what does this portend for individuals who have recently been diagnosed?

In my blogs hereafter I will focus on the many helpful, but hard won lessons I have learned, and the coping skills for both patients and their families that I have found valuable, as well as other insights I have gained from my half century of experience.

Since the onset of my mental illness in 1956 at age thirteen, ten presidents have served this country. Wars have been fought - some won and some lost - while the dreaded cold war drew to a relatively peaceful close with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Medical technology has advanced from crude x-rays to MRI’s, PET scans and remote controlled surgery. Telephone service has gone from share-lines to wireless national networks with internet access, while news reports are now filed real time via satellite from around the globe. Buck Rogers has given way to the space shuttle, lunar visitations and Mars landings.

Over this same period of time, a quiet revolution has taken place in our understanding concerning the cause and treatment of schizophrenia. Bad parenting is no longer blamed. The term “schizophrenogenic mother” no longer echoes in the hallways of massive institutions where the seriously mentally ill have been abandoned by their families, warehoused for life, to suffer devoid of all hope.

Given my family’s long history of affliction with schizophrenia and the severity of my own illness, to what do I attribute my continuing recovery? I believe that there have been several factors, all closely interwoven. At the most fundamental level I have had two vigorous advocates: my mother and my first psychiatrist, Dr. Sol Levy.

My mother never understood my illness and often did precisely the wrong things, but I never doubted that she loved me. Her primary contributions were two: she made certain I received early medical intervention by taking me to see Dr. Levy just five days after the symptoms of my illness first appeared and she insisted I do what the doctor instructed, most importantly that I take the medications he prescribed. In doing this she went against the expressed wishes of my father, the desires of her larger family, her religious training and the traditions of her own upbringing.