The Jewish commandment to visit the sick (not one of the 613 in the Torah, but a rabbinical commandment found in the Talmud) is perhaps even more important when it comes to mental illness.
Yet it seems that a lot of people are reluctant to do this, as novelist and advocate for people with mental illness Jay Neugeboren told some 120 people Sunday at Congregation Beth Israel.
He said that when he was visiting his mentally ill brother Robert at one of the many hospitals or facilities Robert lived in since the 1960s, he noticed that “I’ve never seen another family member there for any [of the other residents].”
Yet maintaining good relationships is “crucial” to any hope of recovery or of managing such illnesses, Neugeboren said.
Even with the more effective psychiatric medications available today, “most of the kinds of [positive] changes [in behavior that the meds can produce] cannot be maintained without healthy ongoing relationships” with family and others.
“When those are taken away, it can have a terrible effect,” he said.
He saw this once with his brother. After a change of facilities and a change of meds, Robert appeared to have improved and to be ready to be discharged.
Then the facility’s administration without warning transferred the social worker Robert had worked with, resulting in a year-long setback for Robert, Neugeboren said.
Neugeboren was the keynote speaker at “Lighting the Way: Families Coping with Mental Illness: A Jewish Community Conference on Mental Health.” The conference was sponsored by the Jewish Community Mental Health Education Project of Milwaukee.
In addition to his novels, Neugeboren, 70, has written two books about his experiences and the related issues: “Imagining Robert: My Brother, Madness and Survival” (1997) and “Transforming Madness: New Lives for People Living with Mental Illness” (1999).
He spent most of his address talking and answering questions about his younger brother and the experience of being Robert’s caregiver and advocate since Robert’s first breakdown in 1962 at age 19.
But he also discussed some broader issues suggested by his experiences with Robert. For example, Robert, who is now 65, is beginning to exhibit the side effects of long-term use of psychiatric medications, some of which look like Parkinson’s disease, plus the kinds of physical illnesses and conditions that go with aging, to the point that the issue of sending him to a nursing home came up.
But many nursing homes don’t have to and will not accept new residents with a history of mental illness, Neugeboren said.
“Residences that have been set up for people with emotional or psychiatric problems don’t have the staff or the skills to deal with physical or medical problems. Nursing homes will not take someone with histories of mental illness,” Neubeboren said. “It is going to be as people live longer an enormous problem.”
In a short conversation with The Chronicle after his address, Neugeboren said he and his brother had grown up in a “moderately observant” Conservative family and that he had been president of a synagogue in Northhampton, Mass.
He also said his Jewish community has been “very helpful, warm and welcoming” in supporting him and Robert; and mentioned that one of the facilities that had given Robert the best treatment was run by New York City’s Jewish federation,
He said that while “I would not generalize,” he did not find Jewish community members to be more stigmatizing or ashamed or secretive about mentally ill people than members of other communities.
And he said “the most important thing” that Jewish communities could do in this area is support organizations like Milwaukee’s Jewish Family Services, making sure they are “well-funded,” so they can provide mentally ill people with “good professional care.”
JFS President/CEO Sylvan Leabman spoke briefly before Neugeboren’s address. He said that JFS has seen a 30 percent increase in requests for help during the past four months.
He also mentioned that more than 63 percent of the agency’s clients are not Jewish.
Jewish Community Mental Health Education Project chair Naomi Berkowitz also spoke briefly. She said that the project is a coalition of more than 40 local Jewish organizations coordinated by JFS.
The conference received financial support from the Jewish Community Foundation, the endowment development program of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, and the Helen Bader Foundation.
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