There But For The Grace of God…

There But For The Grace of God…

“There but for the grace of God go I”: When a shooter with a mental illness hits home

By Paolina Milana

 

Another day, another shooting. Or so it seems. And with every one, I still find myself unconsciously sucking in my breath and waiting for those two six-letter words that often follow: mental illness. As in, the shooter had a history of it. And then, as if on auto-play, those voices in my own head follow up with: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

It’s a mantra I’ve said many a times throughout my own history serving as the primary caregiver to a mom and sister, both diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

When I was growing up, my mother’s voices had convinced her that her family was trying to kill her. So, to protect herself, she kept baseball bats and knives under the mattress, threatening my father with bodily harm should he try to sleep in their bed. He did sleep in their bed. Every single night. As a teenager, I struggled to stay awake to be at the ready should I hear him scream. And then, inevitably, if I waited long enough, I would hear Mamma redirect her rage from just him to all of us. Her screams would now address someone no one else could see, and her words would vow to blow up the entire household, her nightly opera accompanied by the click-click-click of the pilot lights catching as she turned the knobs on our stove. That sound would echo louder and louder, a ticking time bomb. I remember thinking, “Is this the night she does it for real? Kills us all?” My Pollyanna self would show up, trying to soothe with her silver lining logic: “Well, at least we’d all die as a family.”

Family. It’s different for every one of us, but for those of us for whom “family” includes loved ones with a mental illness, it takes on a whole ‘nother meaning and level of concern and responsibility.

In 1988, 23-year-old me stood mesmerized watching the TV news unfolding. A woman named Laurie Dann had just shot six children in a nearby elementary school. The stand-off with police would end with her committing suicide. I remember seeing the shooter’s picture. She looked so much like my mom when she was young. She also bore a striking resemblance to my 21-year-old sister. (Little did I know then that just over a decade later, that same sister would experience her first psychotic episode and be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, inheriting our family’s insanity genes.) I also watched the interviews of family and friends detailing a long history of societal withdrawal, erratic behavior and psychological intervention. And, yet, no one could have predicted what would end up happening.

Thirty-four years ago, the incident was considered a rarity. And back then, all I really focused on in that moment was my mantra: “There but for the grace of God go I.”

As I think back, at any moment, my mamma could have turned her delusional rage outward, not just at her family, but at neighbors, or even strangers. We had guns in the house, both rifles for hunting and handguns for protection (my parents were, after all, Sicilians from the old country). We had a chef’s kitchen (two of them actually) full of sharp knives (again, what Sicilian wouldn’t?) And we had tried everything possible to vanquish the demons from my mother’s mind: Drug therapy, hospital stays, psychiatric commitments, all other sorts of therapy. Some helped for a little while, until they didn’t for a multitude of reasons.

Were we, her family, to blame for her, her illness, and what tragedy might unfold as a result of it? Would we have been had something happened?

My little sister’s path to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia echoed what had been said about Laurie Dann: “A long history of societal withdrawal, erratic behavior and psychological intervention.” Viny, my sister, had been bullied mercilessly in school. Once, another student took a lead pencil and stabbed her in her hand, poking a hole clear through. You’d think someone would have intervened or the school would have done something. But they didn’t. Our older brother did, entering the school building on a later day, physically roughing up the boy, and leaving him with the threat that if he or anyone else ever touched her again, he’d be back and the boy and the bullies would be done.

My brother nearly got arrested. But he didn’t. And no one that year bothered our sister again.

Were they – the school, the bullies – responsible for my sister’s unraveling? Were we, her family? Again, we had done everything we knew how to do. When we knew to do it.

But with Viny, her story is a little more aligned with at least some of our more recent headlines. Before we, her family, even realized that mental illness and not just societal withdrawal or loneliness or bullying trauma were at play, Viny had been writing pages and pages of notes with threats about doing harm to those who had harmed her.

“It’s of no importance when there’s blood shed and all are dead,” and “Don’t even think of snitching to the police or anyone. I’ll be damn pissed”: These were lines from among all she wrote. But there also were other letters and poems of pain and sorrow and of someone whom life and all of us around her let slip through the cracks. “Give me something for the pain, so I can laugh, smile, and be happy again,” and “Dying and sad inside. Laughing and glad on the outside. Even though tears are flowing from within, all you’ll see is one big grin. In hidden feelings, you never seem to win.”

As much as my sister’s mind may have been cluttered, her words are crystal clear: No one is winning in this war as it relates to our mental health because we all still seem to be hiding what’s really going on beneath the surface – the root causes to the problems.

 

With more than 300 mass shootings in the U.S. alone to date in 2022, again, fingers point to those two six-letter words “mental illness” as the cause, blanketing anyone and everyone who would do such a thing as having a mental illness. And, again, the questions are asked about family members who don’t seem to have a clue that their loved ones might do harm to themselves or to others.

 

Who is responsible? What should be known? When should it be evident that a plan to harm is in the works? And if tragedy happens, who should be held accountable?

 

I’m not excusing blatant irresponsibility or suggesting no accountability for actions taken. But, having been intimately engaged with not one but two loved ones with a serious mental illness, I can say without shame that the questions being asked are not easily answered. Mental illness – just like “family” – isn’t a “one size fits all” scenario. The challenges of having and living with a mental illness don’t have ready-made ever-lasting solutions. We, as a society, love to play Monday morning quarterback and in hindsight ask about all that “should” have been done. But hindsight isn’t available when we find ourselves in the middle of madness in real time. There is no crystal ball. There is no playbook for those of us caring for someone with a mental illness to know when they are blurring boundaries between expressing their pain and their emotions through poetry, as was with my sister, or through drawings or social media posts, and actually announcing and warning hatched plans to unleash their rage on others. With rare exception, those of us in the inner circle of a family with mental illness quite simply do not know. And in my own personal experiences with my mom and sister…? Even the medical community and other authorities professionally trained in mental illnesses would not have known.

 

There but for the grace of God go I.

 

My mother and sister could easily have been the ones to commit a horrible crime. As reported in an article in the National Institutes of Health: “Individuals with schizophrenia are four to seven times more likely to commit violent crimes, such as assault and homicide, and four to six times more likely to exhibit general aggressive behavior, such as verbal and physical threats, compared with the general population.” That said, while the public tends to link serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia or psychotic disorders, with violence and mass shootings, the truth is that these are NOT a key factor in most mass shootings or other types of mass murder. According to an article penned by the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry: “Approximately five percent of mass shootings are related to severe mental illness. And although a much larger number of mass shootings (about 25 percent) are associated with non-psychotic psychiatric or neurological illnesses, including depression, and an estimated 23 percent with substance use, in most cases these conditions are incidental.”

 

The truth that we all seem to hide from is that the violence, the lashing out, the mass shootings reflect deeper issues about our culture, our politics, our stereotypes, our fears as a society…as one family. The more we try to white-wash and label and “should” all over ourselves in only addressing the symptoms versus the root causes, the more of what we are getting will increase. And I don’t really have to say it, but I will: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

 

There but for the grace of God go I.

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Paolina Milana is an award-winning published author and mental health advocate. Writing and storytelling became Paolina’s escape, and today is the foundation of her business Madness To Magic – an empowerment and “heal through writing” life and book coaching program. Paolina’s most recent book Committed: A Memoir of Madness in the Family. is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold. Speaker and podcaster of “I’m with Crazy: A Love Story,” Paolina’s has made it her mission to share stories that celebrate the triumph of the human spirit and the power that lies within each of us to bring about change for the better.