Mental Illness and Growing Up: "Frozen in Time" Can Thaw

The news is exciting: a research study has found that cognitive improvements are possible for those with schizophrenia - and that the results can stick. And even better: these results can be achieved with the help of a program to teach social and cognitive skills with the use of computer games. A reporter called me yesterday for a comment before she finished her article, and it certainly got me to reflect on my my son Ben, and how he is - slowly - beginning to show more signs of "growing up."

One of the very first "aha moments" for me, when I finally began to learn about schizophrenia and its symptoms, came with the information that it is a "double-edged sword" of positive (added to personality) and negative (taken away from personality).

I also learned, in NAMI's Family-to-Family course, about the concept of being "frozen in time" for many affected by mental illness. Since it often strikes young adults just at the time when their brains would begin to make those final cortical connections that we parents call "growing up", they are often denied all the advantages of having been able to absorb and learn from the experiences of other young adults: first love, completing high school, fending for oneself at college, etc.

My Ben never had the chance to do all that. From age 15 to about 21, he was too busy fighting what was going on in his brain to "grow up", too busy treading water to be able to swim.

I thought about Ben, and about all that had changed as he progresses through his teens and into the gradual onset symptoms that would later become full-blown psychosis and a definite diagnosis.

It wasn't just that he was acting in strange new ways, eventually far beyond what any of my friends' teens seemed to be doing - it was that he seemed to have lost so much, too: caring about school. treasuring his friends, warmth, genuine emotion, excitement for life, the ability to - well, care. That broke my heart even more than the hallucinations I came to suspect he was experiencing.

And later, after diagnosis, into treatment and along the path of recovery, he often did seem, indeed, "frozen" at the age he'd been before the illness took hold. He seemed like a mid-teen in a 20-something body.

Years later, as depicted in my memoir Ben Behind His Voices, Ben entered a phase of recovery. Medications had brought him partly back to us, and with the right regimen for him even the negative symptoms started to ease. His sense of humor, his ability to organize, his desire to care about his family and friends, all began to slowly return - to my great relief and delight - but the journey was, and is, slow. Patience is required, for us all.

Still - I am seeing growth. He cares very much about school, about his grades, about doing a good job with his assignments (yes, he even proof-reads). And, yes, he miraculously is now also employed part-time, and has a terrific work ethic that has lasted past the honeymoon period. Woo hoo! He actually seems to "get" the concepts of cause and effect, how his actions today affect both others on his team and also his own future.

This took a long time. It's as though his previous activities in the earlier months in recovery had somehow helped to rewire his brain, slowly but surely, and rebuild some new connections where the old ones had been damaged by his illness.

We had no computer games to play for this progress - but these things, I believe, did help to reinforce new information to the circuitry in his brain, a kind of experience-based neuroplasticity:

• outpatient program structure after hospitalizations
• scheduled chores in his group home
• clubhouse activities and responsibilities
• Volunteer work
• chores for the family with precise lists of tasks
• exposure to theatre and other family activities, as ready

...and so on. If someone you love is recovering in mental illness, and seems "frozen in time", hang in there. You may need to give them time, and a little bit of help, to thaw.