Thursday, August 12, 2004

‘Crazy’ Offers Insightful Look At Personal Hell

By Michael Kilian

It's an illness that can announce itself with screams in the night. Or, there might be slow withdrawal from the world into delusion and even catatonic trances.

It can involve hearing mysterious voices or suffering hallucinations and tormenting paranoia. Sometimes it is accompanied by other mental ailments, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression.

It tends to affect young people in their very early 20s. There is a significant incidence among college students, yet it can afflict anyone. Many of the homeless living on the streets are victims.

"Schizophrenia" is a word that strikes dread in the general population, though most people know little or nothing about it or are terribly misinformed. Yet, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in every 100 Americans will be diagnosed with schizophrenia in his or her lifetime.

A decade of recovery

One such case is John Cadigan, a truly gifted artist who was struck by an extremely serious and complicated form of the disease called schizoaffective disorder at age 21 while a senior at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University.

It took a decade for him to recover to the point of maintaining a stable life. During that time, he and his documentary-maker sister, Katie Cadigan, compiled a video record of what he was going through, starting with the onset of his ailment in 1991.

"I didn't know exactly what was going on," John said, in an interview with me. "Part of the reason I asked her to film me was to try and understand what was going on with me."

By 1997, thanks to new, advanced medications, he had improved enough to take over directing the video project.

The result was "People Say I'm Crazy," a 1 1/2-hour documentary that has played a number of film festivals and has just completed a week's run at Chicago's Facets Cinematheque. It will be given a much wider audience on the Cinemax cable network at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

Authentic depiction

It is the first documentary examination of schizophrenia and its effects done by an actual patient.

I can vouch for its authenticity. A very close relative of mine developed schizophrenia, also while a 21-year-old senior at Carnegie Mellon. But this was in 1999, after the new drugs had become available.

Treatment with the drugs led to my relative's returning to college, graduating summa cum laude and taking a responsible job.

"He was lucky," said Katie. "I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the [drugs] had been available [in 1991], because they know that with each psychotic break there is more brain damage."

My relative had one psychotic break. John has had four.

"People Say I'm Crazy" is all about a descent into and partial escape from a personal hell. Beset by paranoia and other symptoms of his disease, John stopped going to classes and isolated himself in his college apartment, more or less treating his condition through alcoholism.

"When I was getting sicker and sicker, I was just drinking more and more and more," he said.

His behavior led to his being hospitalized and receiving all manner of medications and treatment, including electro-convulsive therapy, but nothing helped. He would go into catatonic trances. He suffered horribly from delusion. His paranoia was crushing.

"I thought they were all out to get me," he said.

In 1994, he began taking the new drug Clozaril, and recovery got under way, though he suffered an unfortunate side effect with a weight gain of some 150 pounds and the prospect of diabetes.

He has since lost 100 pounds. He still suffers some symptoms of his disease.

John Cadigan cannot hold a full-time job and is dependent on Social Security disability assistance. But he lives on his own in a low-income studio apartment in Palo Alto, Calif. His family members, originally from Danbury, Conn., have relocated to California and live in nearby communities.

He has a studio to work in, creating extraordinary woodcut prints, which he sells.

"I'm an artist," he said. "I'm lucky enough to have a studio that my family provides for, and that's how I spend most of my time."

Unrealistic portrayal

John and Katie are not happy with the way mental illness is often depicted and understood. They admired the briefly aired 2000 TV series about a mental hospital called "Wonderland" for its acting -- the cast included Patricia Clarkson and Martin Donovan -- but objected to the unrealistic and often highly violent way patients were portrayed. As Katie noted, most hospital mental units are quiet places.

They liked Russell Crowe's 2001 movie "A Beautiful Mind" for the positive way it presented mental illness. But they thought it romanticized schizophrenia and veered too much from the facts of schizophrenic Nobel laureate John Nash's life.

Their film, they hope, will help the nation understand schizophrenia for what it truly is.

"The surprise to us at screenings of the film was how many health- care professionals will stand up and say things," said Katie.

"There was one nurse manager who ran a psych unit who said, 'I've been running a psych unit for over 25 years and after seeing your film, I will never treat my patients the same way again.'

"It was a wonderful compliment to our film, but we were sort of horrified about those 25 years of patients who were under her care."