Family torn by mental illness is placed on waiting lists

By BARBARA WALSH, Portland Press Herald Writer

Copyright © 2002 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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	Staff photo by John Ewing Stephanie Jackson hangs her head off the side of her bed while talking with her twin sister, Bethany. Stephanie was born into a family that has struggled with mental illness for generations.
	Staff photo by John Ewing Stephanie Jackson lives with the depression and isolation that often accompanies mental illness. She retreats into a world of dolls and stuffed animals. Stephanie is 13.
	CASTAWAY CHILDREN: Maine's Most Vulnerable Kids Follow this three-part series on the plight of Maine children with mental illness and get more information including where to find help, a glossary of terms and how to voice your opinion, here. To top of story

Stephanie Jackson wrote the message in blue marker. She scribbled it after the police had removed her raging sister, after they had arrested her dad for restraining her sister too roughly, after the neighbors tossed a rock through the front window.

"Dear God, why do I have to live like this?" the girl, now 13 years old, wrote on her bedroom windowsill.

Stephanie and her family say that June night last year was the worst. It is a painful snapshot of a family fractured by an illness called bipolar disorder. It is an illness that rages in 15-year-old Emily Jackson and is now emerging in Stephanie.

It is a sickness that imprisons the entire family: three girls, a mom and dad. An illness that their mother,Tammy Jackson, explains is a "monster" screaming, swearing, breaking windows, chairs, tossing bowls, TV remotes, stereos.

A sickness that brings the police monthly, weekly and sometimes hourly, after Tammy Jackson calls and pleads for help: "My daughter Emily is out of control."

It is an illness that forces Emily and her mom to the emergency room month after month, begging for a crisis bed to calm Emily and give respite to a family desperate for peace.

A sickness that makes Stephanie's twin sister, Bethany, want to move far from her family, someplace with no screaming, no swearing. Someplace where she doesn't have to be afraid of "what next?"

In the middle of this storm, the Jacksons have asked the state for the help.

Instead, they've been put on waiting lists for more than a year.

"Everyone says 'just hang in there' but how long is a family supposed to hang in there?" Tammy Jackson asks. "How long? Our hope is slowly dwindling away."

Emily Jackson was born blue.

The umbilical cord had wrapped around her neck twice.

After doctors cut the cord, the baby with the tufts of red hair and blue eyes wailed.

Despite her sketchy start, Emily, her mom says, was "a gift - a happy baby." But her fate seem predetermined.

She was born into a family with three generations of mental illness. Tammy's aunts, uncles, grandparents had clinical depression. Tammy's grandfather and great-grandfather killed themselves.

Tammy, too, lives with a bipolar disorder that causes severe mood swings, depression, paranoia and deprives her of feeling "safe, secure, settled."

She knows this illness strikes children harder, prompting manic moods that come suddenly, lifting them to giddy highs and then dropping them to desperate lows.

Tammy watches her daughter Emily struggle with this sickness, acting at times like "a caged animal."

Emily pounds her fists on tables, tears curtains, smashes windows, breaks doors, says unspeakable things. At night, she lies awake and screams.

It is Tammy who drives Emily to the emergency room. Each time, Tammy prays there will be a crisis bed or a long-term placement where doctors can re-evaluate Emily and help her learn to cope, to control her behaviors.

Instead, she and Emily sit for six and seven hours, with Emily screaming, a security guard by their side and "no one acknowledging my child."

It is Tammy who calls the police on her daughter. Fifteen times from June 2001 through January 2002. She has watched the police handcuff Emily in the kitchen. She has seen the looks of disgust on the officers' faces as they come again and again. She listened as one of them told her: "Your daughter is an animal. You need to lock her up."

When he left, Tammy ran to the bathroom and threw up.

Tammy knows that Emily's Medicaid coverage means her daughter is legally entitled to help. But it has not come.

She asked for an in-home counselor to help keep Emily stable and teach the family how to calm her rages. The family was put on a waiting list 13 months ago. They still wait.

Tammy has begged Emily's caseworker for a treatment program, where Emily could learn to control her moods. Emily was put on a waiting list 11 months ago. The family still waits.

Tammy Jackson is a mom who loves her children "with all my heart and soul," has run for Lewiston City Council, plants flowers, quilts, gets her family to church on Sunday, and feels shame, guilt for "hating Emily's illness. Hating her actions. Hating our life."

She watches home videos of Emily as a giggling, singing, dancing child, and she sobs for what her daughter once was. She despises the chaos that poisons her home and family.

The chaos culminated last year on a warm June night. The police came again to their home, this time to arrest her husband, Douglas, for grabbing Emily by the neck when she tried to run away.

Tammy called Emily's caseworker again that night begging: "You've got to get Emily out of our home. We can't live like this anymore."

While Tammy talked on the phone, a neighbor tossed a rock through their window. Later, neighbors taunted: "Your husband's a child abuser."

Tammy and her daughters Stephanie and Bethany slept together that evening, crying, shaking, afraid of "what next." Months later, Emily got worse. In the fall of 2001, police arrested her for assaulting her dad. This winter, Emily erupted again. She busted the living room window, swung a television cord at her dad, threatened to get a gun and shoot him.

Tammy called the police. They handcuffed Emily and took her to St. Mary's Regional Medical Center's psychiatric ward, where she stayed for several days. Emily later told her mom: "I hate you. I wish you were dead."

Tammy drove home and cried.

In between the rages, the police calls and the emergency visits, Tammy has thought: "If the state knocked on my door and said, 'Give up custody of Emily, that's the only way you're going to get services,' I'd do it."

She knows other families who abandoned their children to get help. But then she stares into Emily's eyes and knows much of the troubles lie inside her head and she thinks, "Poor Emily. Poor us."

	Staff photo by John Ewing
	Tammy Jackon's oldest daughter, Emily, lives with bipolar disorder and sometimes rages out of control, bringing the police to their Lewiston home. She is 15.

As a mother she wants to "fix it." "I want more than anything for Emily to be a normal 15-year-old daughter. Have friends. Hang out at the mall. Blab on the phone. But she has none of that."

And Tammy wonders about her family - the anger, resentment that "builds up and builds up." She worries too about how Emily's turmoil affects Stephanie, who also struggles with the depression, lonelieness and wild moods her bipolar disorder brings.

"There's never really a time to deal with the hurt. You're on to the next crisis. You think, 'When are we going to be a normal family? When are we going to be able to laugh?' "

Douglas Jackson dyes cloth for tennis balls.

He works the graveyard shift, seven days a week.

In the morning when he returns from the factory, bits of yellow fluorescent fuzz cover his baseball cap.

He does not talk about the night police arrested him for restraining his daughter Emily too roughly. He'd never been to jail before. It left him scared about what would happen next. Scared to live in his own home.

He does not speak about the illnesses that makes his daughter Emily rage and his daughter Stephanie quietly say: "I need to go to the hospital."

He has cried when police handcuffed his daughter Emily and took her away for hitting him. He cried when he told his family: "I'm going to jail."

He waited nine months, wondering, worrying about his assault charge. He refused to plead guilty, knowing he was not a criminal, not an abuser, but a dad who holds onto his daughter when she rages.

In February, the prosecutor dismissed the case against Douglas Jackson. That night after the court hearing, the family celebrated with pizza and sodas.

He is a man who quietly worries about the future. During February school vacation, his daughter Stephanie spent 11 days in St. Mary's psychiatric ward. While she was gone, he kept a piece of notebook paper in his pocket.

Stephanie had written him a note: "Hey wassup? Just want you to know how much I love you. Even though I don't show it much. Well gotta bounce. Love your daughter."

Douglas Jackson read the letter again and again.

Weeks after Stephanie came home from the hospital, he bought his three daughters new dresses and shoes for Easter. He wanted this Easter to be special, like it used to be when the girls were younger. Like when they had few troubles and the police never came to their door.

Emily Jackson has swallowed 40 different medications since she was seven.

In elementary school, Emily couldn't sit still. Couldn't listen.

Doctors diagnosed her with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a neurological imbalance, causing kids to be distracted, impulsive, edgy.

In seventh grade, she raged, screamed, ran in the school halls. Doctors diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, an illness that sparks manic mood swings.

She lists the events that have marked her life in the past two years: "I've been to the emergency room 10 times. A2 four times. That's the psych ward. Been suspended from school five times."

She gets bused to an alternative school for students with emotional problems. She watches kids get restrained, scream, swear. She hopes, prays and dreams of returning to a "normal school."

There are times her anger bubbles over and she "hates the world. Hates everything in it."

Then she turns somber, professing adamantly: "I'm not proud of some things I've done. I'm getting a job this summer. I'm getting my driver's permit. I have goals."

Other times, she can be giddy, sweet, hugging her mom, clapping her hands, skipping from her sister's room with the news: "I'm going to the circus."

Childhood pictures in her family scrapbook stir memories and a yearning for a childhood that was simpler. Emily stares at photos of three round-faced, freckled girls hugging one another. A photo of her dad kissing her cheek.

"I was Daddy's girl when I was young," she remembers, her voice soft, lost in the memory.

On a February afternoon, she sits in her lilac-painted room. Two teddy bears and a green stuffed turtle stand near her stereo speakers. A makeup case crammed with lipstick and eye paint rests on her bureau. A white Bible lies on top of her boom box.

She talks about breaking the living room window on a dark evening because "I had to break something. Some people cut themselves when they get mad. I break things. I dunno, I just break things."

Little things make her mad. Like a friend who doesn't call back. Like a hole in her jeans. Like the look on her sister's face.

She tries to explain the rages. "It's like a trash can. When the trash gets to the top you have to bring it out. When the trash gets to the top of me I blow up really bad and flip out."

She cherishes notes and cards from friends, family, teachers. Messages telling her they love her, that she has hope, promise, "is wonderful."

She writes sporadically in her journal. Much of it is about boys. Some of it chronicles her trips to hospitals, group homes, her desire to be like everybody else: "Hey, I cried for like an hour today. Why ain't I like a normal teen-ager?"

Emily is 15 now and she wonders why her family wants her out of the house, "Why my mom wants to put me away."

And then she'll say in an even tone: "I swear at her and call her names."

Each Sunday, she attends church with her family, proudly singing in the choir and praying for the "Lord to look out for me. For everything to come to an end and for peace to come to my family."

She does not think about the future. Her counselors tell her to break the day, her life into fragments.

"You don't have to be good for the rest of your life. You only have to be good for 24 hours. Like an alcoholic. Just take a few hours at a time."

Stephanie Jackson dreams of being normal.

"If I had one dream in my life it would be to be like other kids," she says.

She hates being separated from other students in her special education class. Hates it when some kids look at her strangely or call her names.

"It's tough to make friends when you're in special ed," she says. "They don't get it. The illness. You can't always control what you do."

Her illnesses, bipolar and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders, prompted three visits to St. Mary's psychiatric ward. She goes when the "hurt inside gets really bad." These hospital visits scare her, leave her homesick and feeling "dumb."

Often, Stephanie cries herself to sleep because "I have no friends. I feel like I could just fall off the face of the earth."

Stephanie is 13. She is thin and small. She wears kerchiefs that pull her brown hair back. Her brown eyes linger and narrow, watching, wary of people she does not know.

She loathes crowds, rooms full of people. Classical music and fleece blankets soothe her.

Dolls comfort her. She hugs them, holds them at night when she's sad or lonely. Her favorite is Abigail, a plastic doll the size of an infant.

"Dolls are my friends," she says. "Sometimes, I feel like they're the only friends I have."

When the police come to quiet Emily's rages, Stephanie retreats to her room. She holds onto her big, black dog, Winston, until the screaming stops.

Stephanie shook so hard the night her dad got arrested her mom thought she was going to have a seizure. That evening, after the police left for the third time, after the neighbors tossed a rock through their window, Stephanie wanted to know why. Why was there so much hurt in her home?

She grabbed a blue marker and wrote on her bedroom windowsill: "Dear God, why do I have to live like this?"

Nine months later, she still asks herself that question. "Sometimes, I think it's never going to get better," she says.

Every Sunday, she goes to church with her family and she prays "that my family gets along and that people don't fight. And that Emily does better."

She sits quietly in the church pew comforted by Emily singing in the choir.

"She loves to sing. I hope she gets happier."

This April, her family gathered after church to receive baptism. The ritual gave Stephanie hope.

"It was awesome. My whole family was there, and it's like we're starting all over again.

"Maybe it will be a new beginning for us."

Bethany Jackson is the middle child, the first twin pushed from her mother's womb.

She lives in a five-room apartment where "basically you have to be aware." Her two sisters, Emily and Stephanie, "are like bombs and you just don't know when they're going to blow up."

They are sisters who scream sometimes from morning till night. Sisters who say hateful, horrible words. Sisters who throw things at her, sisters who slap, hit and "who make me afraid." And sisters who "I love to death."

When Bethany speaks of Emily and Stephanie, her thoughts are jumbled, like pieces of a puzzle that won't fit.

"Stephanie is my twin and I love her," she says. "Emily is like a friend when she wants to be. I can tell her anything. But when they flip out, sometimes you don't want to love them."

Every morning, every day, Bethany wakes, wishing, praying: "Will today be different?"

It is the screaming that she hates the most.

The screaming that brings police or forces her dad to restrain Emily.

Everyone screamed the night her dad got arrested.

Bethany couldn't stop crying. The police later asked her: "Does your dad abuse you?" She angrily told them "No."

The next day Bethany graduated from sixth grade.

She and her mother had planned to pick out her dress, do her hair. Instead, her mom left to bail her dad.

Bethany pulled a dress from her closet and wore a sweatshirt over it. She graduated with a class full of kids who all knew her dad had been arrested.

"It was the worst day of my life."

After her dad's arrest, Emily went to a group home for a few days and their home was quiet.

And Bethany, as she always is when Emily leaves, was "happy, relieved."

"When she goes away, we get a break. Everything is calm."

Bethany feels differently about her 13-year-old twin.

When Stephanie leaves for the hospital, Bethany worries about her sister, who is "so small."

"I get scared for her," she says.

Sometimes when they're both home, lying in their bed at night, Bethany's twin cries to her: "Why do I have this disease?"

Bethany cries too, wondering: "Maybe it'd be easier if I had it too?"

Other questions creep into her thoughts. When she's older, will her sisters be the same, worse or better? Will they have families of their own?

If there is screaming, raging, she promises herself she won't be there to hear it. She plans to move far away from her family. Maybe to a house near the woods.

She camped out once before and remembers the trees towering to the sky and the silence humming in her ears. She hopes to find a place like that again. A place where there is only quiet.

"A place I could listen to the birds."

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