Remember our Mentally Ill Issue from last year? That’s the one where we went and stayed with a group of Chicagoans who are dealing with heavy, heavy mental illnesses. They wrote every article. You can see the whole thing here.

So we just received this letter this month:

Hey guys,
I would have written this sooner but I’ve been coping with serious depression and am just now getting to a mental state that is about as close to normal as I am going to get.
I got your Mentally Ill issue soon after a stint in Chicago’s finest psych ward last year and I still keep it as a sort of literary security blanket. For some reason, when my meds aren’t working right and my mental state is all over the map, re-reading this issue reminds me that others are going through the same crazy crap and they are making it OK enough to put together an entire magazine. It’s a comfort.
I still have that issue and I’ll probably hang on to it for a long, long time. Thanks for putting it out there… it’s saved my brain more than a few times.

We decided to follow up with the letter’s writer a bit, so we wrote her back and asked her some questions…

Vice: When did you go to the hospital?

MLO: I went to Chicago Lakeshore Hospital on February 27th or 28th of 2005

What led you there?
The immediate problem was, in psych jargon, suicidal ideation. Basically what that meant was for most of the week before going into the hospital, I was having a strong, recurring desire to take a sharp implement and slash my forearms from wrist to elbow. The day that I actually went to the hospital, I took all of the knives in the house and put them in a basket, which I then carried to the bathroom, climbed up on a stepstool and put on the top of a cabinet. The desire was strong enough that I didn’t trust myself to be within reaching distance of knives for the short period of time it took for my husband to go downstairs and warm up the car.

Did you actually want to die?
I can’t remember if it was that, or if the desires had to do with stopping the pain and craziness that was going on in my head. I do know that I did not want to follow through with the desire, because doing so would somehow push me over some sort of line. Also I had and have a standing verbal agreement with my therapist that I would call her before I actually went through with anything that would cause harm to myself.

What have you been diagnosed with?
I’d previously been diagnosed with depression. I’ve been battling it on and off for several years now. I also had a brief hypomanic episode a couple of years ago, but haven’t had one since.

What were the first couple of days in the hospital like?
They redefined the meaning of the word surreal. I remember that they took all of my jewelry—even my wedding band, which really upset me. Since my bra had a wire, I had to remove that too, which also upset me since the hospital was coed. Actually they put most of my stuff in lockup, and a good amount in supervised storage, meaning I couldn’t access it unless I got permission from an attendant.

It sounds awful.
I remember crying on the payphone to my therapist the first day there, about stuff like how I missed my dog, they took my wedding band, I missed my husband. I cried at night for the first two nights, and then the medication change kicked in and I stopped.

Was it hard to get admitted to the hospital?
There were a lot of forms to fill out before they admitted me. A lot of waiting too, since they had to contact my psychiatrist. For some reason what stands out in my mind the most about the forms was one about not being able to own a gun for a year or so because I’d been in a psychiatric hospital.

Depression gets over-diagnosed I think, but when it’s real, it can be so debilitating.
I’m what is termed a high-functioning depressive, which basically means that I can fake being OK better than most. I was in this psych ward, but I still was operating as though I was in the outside world. Most of the patients would just go up to the attendant’s station and demand whatever it was that they wanted. I would go up to there and say, “excuse me” and “please” and “thank you.” I came in dressed in my work clothes, which included a snooty sort of shawl thing, so quite a few of the patients and some of the staff mistook me for someone who worked at the hospital rather than a patient.

Well, I’m glad you liked the Mentally Ill Issue.
When I first got it, I was still feeling off because of issues with the medication I was on from the hospital. It worked really well when I was in, but once I got out and started having to do stuff again, it was causing problems, which made my psychiatrist start to tinker with the dosages, which led to physical and mental glitches while my system tried to figure out what to do with the changing levels.
It’s hard to explain how the magazine helps me. When my mental health is going wonky because of whatever, reading the articles somehow has a calming effect as though someone is telling me, “Your mind is off right now but it’s going to be OK” or, “There are other people out there that are experiencing what you are experiencing right now and they are OK—look, they put together this magazine.” It’s odd because it’s not like there are any reassurances within those articles. Something in me is reinforced or bolstered up by reading about these people relating their experiences with their disorder and the things they have to do to cope.
Usually, reading the issue is followed by a bowl of cereal, since that’s a comfort food.

Nice!