I am at the ER.
Man, I hate this place. I spent too much time here with my husband. For four months, cancer burrowed into his bones, causing him excruciating pain until he died. Now, five years later, I’m back.
This time, it is even worse. My teenage son is telling the intake nurse his plans to kill himself.
I don’t understand this.
An hour earlier, we were enjoying a cheerful family dinner with lots of joking. Teasing. Laughter.
The food wasn’t great (it was overcooked, dry, and tasteless) because I had cooked. But we’d had fun. We’d played board games.
We’d reminisced about the holidays. Conversation flowed easily. It all felt… happy.
Then, as we were putting the last board game away, he said, “Okay, I gotta go. Either I’m driving myself to the ER tonight, or I’m going to die.”
My daughter and I sat staring at him in stunned silence.
Piper: “Are you joking?”
Sam: “I am dead serious.”
I insisted on driving him.
Now I stand here, listening to my beautiful boy describe his imminent death to a stranger in scrubs. When I glance down at my shirt, there are huge wet spots on my chest. I didn’t realize I have been crying since we left the house.
I look around the large waiting area, packed with people in hospital-grade masks. Every seat is filled. Folks standing around, leaning against walls, lying on the floor, sitting in wheelchairs. Most are wearing their parkas and winter boots and knitted caps; a few are wrapped in thin white hospital blankets.
Aside from my son’s terrible words, all I hear is coughing.
It’s the sixth of January in Minneapolis. We have entered the post-holiday COVID surge. It takes three days for my son to get a bed.
I stand here, in this awful place, overcrowded with people in masks. I know a few of them will never leave; they just don’t know it yet. They are staring down their mortality in the same room as my son.
Their physical health is in crisis. They are facing a potentially deadly event.
My son’s mental health is in crisis. He is facing a potentially deadly event.
My son speaks the words out loud to the nurse: “If you don’t help me, I am going to kill myself.”
In that moment, I fully understood this truth:
Mental. Health. Matters.
It’s not like I didn’t already know this! I specialize in mental health, for goodness’ sake. Some people would say I am an expert.
I have a doctorate in clinical and forensic psychology. I am a tenured professor in a psychology department. I spent 15 years as the department chair.
I teach classes on psychopathology at the graduate level. I’ve conducted neuropsychological assessments at a nearby medical school. I am an advisor for doctoral dissertations in mental health research at multiple universities.
I am also a psychotherapist. I see patients at a clinic part-time. I do crisis interventions with communities after mass shootings. I host a podcast on mental health that has thousands of downloads around the world from South Korea to the Russian Federation. I am an international coach and consultant on mental illness, and I speak to international audiences on the topic of mental health.
Of course I know mental health matters.
Well, I mean, I knew this from a professional perspective.
But now it is real. This is not an academic pursuit. My child’s life is on the line. He wants to die.
I felt like that neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor, who had a massive stroke. She watched as her own brain started to shut down.
I’m a mental health expert who is watching my son’s mental health shut down.
My expertise is being called into play, but I am not able to apply it. This is too personal. At this moment, I am not a psychologist. I am his mother.
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