A Lawyer Rests His Case
My friend Eddie with whom I had become acquainted at an AA meeting in a small Northwest Arkansas town in 1993 checked into a local Marriott Hotel one Thursday evening. He had only his briefcase and a loaded 38-calibre revolver. Eddie sat at the desk in his room and scribbled a quick note to his wife, Eileen. “I’m sorry,” he wrote. Eddie then pointed the barrel of the revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger.
Eddie left behind his wife of 18 years and two beautiful young children. He also left behind a shingle: Eddie Jacobson, Attorney-at-Law. At 42, it seemed Eddie had everything. Everything, that is, except freedom from nagging clinical depression, which he tried in vain to self-medicate with alcohol and when he got sober by working the 12 Steps of AA there was no more booze, but plenty of depression.
“Eddie,” his AA sponsor said, “you don’t need anti-depressants. You just need to work the Steps a little harder.”
Fear of stigma attached to mental illness keeps people like Eddie’s sponsor in draconian ignorance.
Every death ruled a suicide should be listed as caused by depression. It is easily treatable, but the stigma attached to getting help can be fatal. My younger brother killed himself when he was 35. Our sister died by her own hand five years later at 40. My brother and sister chose to die rather than seek help.
Our kids need better education in our public schools about mental disorders, which are the leading cause of disability in the United States. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older – about 1 in 4 adults – suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.
This fact should not be forgotten when a 42-year-old lawyer with a wife and two young children checks into a hotel and blows his brains out and we are left to ask why.
Tom Roberts is both a patient and mental health advocate in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a former broadcast journalist and college professor now speaking and writing full-time. His book Chewing through the Straps: Living Successfully with Bipolar Disorder will be released in December by Vision Quest Press. URL: http://www.4clearcommunication.com. Email: tom@4clearcommunication.com
Managing Mental Pain is as Challenging as Managing Physical Pain
Hello world!
As a keynote speaker, author and public speaking coach, I use two phrases when I teach my clients the kills of oratory. One is from the movies; the other from American history.
- “What we have here is failure to communicate.” The Captain said that to Luke (Paul Newman) in Cool Hand Luke (1967). Here’s the full line:
What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach, so you get what we had here last week which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don’t like it any more than you men.
The captain isn’t the only one who utters the words. Later in the movie, the main character, Luke (Paul Newman), still cocky despite being cornered by prison guards, openly mocks the Captain with the famous line.
If you haven’t seen the film, do yourself a favor and rent it tonight. You’ll love it or I’ll eat some “shaky pudding!” (you’ll catch my joke when you watch the film)
2. “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
A proverb advising the tactic of caution and non-aggression, backed up by the ability to do violence if required.
The widespread use of this proverb began with American president Theodore Roosevelt. In a speech in Chicago in April 1903, he said:
There is a homely old adage which runs: ‘Speak softly and carry and big stick; you will go far.’ If the American nation will speak softly, and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoughly efficient navy, the Munroe Doctrine will go far.
The proverb is sometimes cited as being of African origin, although I can find no evidence for that. If it truly was an ‘old adage’ in 1903 it ought to be easy to find earlier citations of it, but I can find none. It is certainly possible that Roosevelt coined the phrase himself.
I use the phrase “Speak clearly and carry a big stick” because I believe that mastering oral communication gives you power. Look at what a skinny black kid from South Chicago did with his the gift of public speaking! He became President of the United States!
My blog, i admit, is my first and is a work-in-progress. There is much more on my web site http://www.4clearcommunication.com.
Tom Roberts, M.A.
San Francisco, CA
