Schizophrenia rains down guilt on some families–old notions held that poor parenting was to blame, with a finger usually pointed at the mother. Today it is believed to have a strong genetic component, leaving some relatives feeling as though they handed down a curse. The disease still brings shame, and it can ruin a family’s finances. The Greilings were in a better position than most. They are well-educated and prosperous–and enlightened enough to know that schizophrenia is nobody’s fault. But they also know the feeling of standing in the living room of their split-level home amid the wreckage of their son’s hallucinations: smashed flowerpots, holes punched in the wall, kitty litter kicked across the floor. Their son’s bouts have meant calling the police, with his terrified mother pleading: “He’s 6-foot-4, and I’m afraid of him.”
For Jim’s sister, Angela Greiling Keane, a journalist in Washington, it means feelings of helplessness, a thousand miles from crisis. Unexpected telephone calls trigger anxiety. “When it’s 7 a.m., and the caller ID says it’s my parents, I automatically worry: is there trouble with Jim?”
Theirs are ghastly struggles. After one of Jim’s rampages at home his parents called the police and asked them to take him to the hospital. But the police refused, since the mentally ill cannot be committed until they pose a threat. “You reach the point,” said Mindy, “where you’re actually hoping for something to happen, so he’ll be forced to go to a hospital.”
There had been worries for years–during high school Jim smoked marijuana, and the family wanted to believe drugs were behind his erratic behavior. But while he was a student at the University of Montana he called home and said something that gave his mother chills. “He said he could hear the voices of women through the walls of the next apartment,” said Mindy. “He said they were talking about him.”
Mindy Greiling, a state representative, was busy at a late-night legislative session last year when another call came from Montana. Jim had been arrested. “After the session adjourned, she drove through the night to the jail. She felt “heart-broken,” she says, as she saw her son behind the glass wearing an orange prisoner’s suit, looking gaunt and whiskered. Jim had broken a window in a neighboring apartment, then climbed inside, lay down on a sofa and fell asleep. The judge in Montana released Jim, who entered a state mental hospital where he underwent treatment for three months. Now he lives in a house in St. Paul with four other patients. Everybody is assigned a job; Jim drives a van on the late shift. He is taking his medicine and seems to have gotten accustomed to his routine.
But for his family, the worries have scarcely stopped. Just the other day, the old voices came back. Jim was sitting on the sofa with his father, when he turned and asked: “Did you just say that you didn’t like me?” The father said no. Jim smiled, reassured. For his parents, it is frightening to know that Jim still hears those voices. They can only hope that he ignores them.
