Henry Schecker

Former Staff Writer

The following commentary contains passionate opinions about mental health as well as a powerful personal testimony on grief. Like all commentaries in the Stroud Courier, it represents the opinion of the author only. Anyone struggling with mental health issues at ESU is encouraged to seek help.

Medications for mental illness are overprescribed, and just like the opiate crisis followed the overprescription of painkillers in the 1990s, there’s going to be some unforeseen mass societal ill that follows this in the 2030s—a wave of emotionally numbed drone ants committing mass crime, for instance, or waves of deadly car accidents that will no doubt lead to regulation of self-driving aids. A reckoning always comes, regardless of intention. The road to hell is paved, etc. People take antidepressants that lead to thoughts of suicide, and we see nothing wrong with that oxymoron. I’ve always hated the trend of “emo,” but when I was a teenager, it was cool to cry and be detached and cynical and sad and whiny. Then those people grew up to dictate our pharmaceutical industry.

I lost both parents and a dog of 14 years within a 12-month span between Jan. 9, 2020 to Jan. 16, 2021, and truly felt I was in the depths of the worst pain and sadness that I had ever known. I lost my mother because of congestive heart failure, after 10 years of illness and diabetes and minor amputations, muscle atrophy, nurse homes, sedentation, kidney failure, heart failure and then, mercifully, death. My dog I lost to old age, and my father to COVID-19, a disease I acquired at the same time as him and barely survived.

Then I dated someone who made clinical depression their default personality and clung to the badge of mental illness like a security blanket, and I realized I don’t have depression at all.

Having the most mental illness now at the top of your profile gives you social clout and pity party points. It wasn’t until I dated that person that I realized I’m incredibly well-adjusted.

I’ve never called out of work for a “mental health day.” I’ve woken up and had to fight back the flow of tears, but after the death of my father, I worked harder than I had ever worked in my life. Suddenly I had the weight of the world upon my shoulders, car payments, the mortgage and the utilities. The bills kept coming, and Mom left us nothing when she passed: years of poor health left her lungs barely exchanging oxygen and CO2 at a passable rate and she was often in a stupor. A permanent oxygen deprivation high, so she had long stopped paying her life insurance policy, as well as the rest of the bills she was in charge of in the 30-plus years of my parent’s marriage. (She was an accountant and one of the most brilliant mathematical minds I had ever known until sickness stripped her of everything that made my mother wonderful, brilliant and unique.)

My father had a pension and a life insurance policy, but I had no clue when I would or how to receive that, and when he passed he left no will. A very expensive and very mentally exhausting exchange began with a lawyer and an accountant. It would be 19 months before that much-needed financial relief would be on the way. So I worked, worked hard. Often as much overtime as I could be given—60-hour work weeks, working security, talking to the general public and registering guests to a gated community. Every day swallowing down whatever maladies were wearing on my mind, never once putting the burden of my personal tragedies on my coworkers or the world at large. I felt shame. I feel shame letting anyone know of my parents. It makes me feel like I’m somehow cheapening their deaths, like I’m using it for sympathy or milking it. The only reason I am explaining it here is simply to give context.

The mortgage was $1,025 a month. I made $1,800-$2,000 a month. Then there was roughly $600-$700 in utilities and other expenses. I did what I had to. I took in a roommate in my parent’s old bedroom. I worked overtime. I had an unwavering budget that I’d sooner die than go over. All the while I grieved and mourned in my own unique way. I felt like I had to hide it, like an animal hides a wound.

My generation and the one immediately following are taking the piss with this mental health awareness stuff. I go on dating sites and the profiles are like baseball cards, the introductory paragraphs list a full stat sheet of mental illness and they wear it like a badge of honor. It’s a free pass to excuse any and all personal failings and shortcomings, a pre-emptive “get out of jail free” card.

I’ve got friends, acquaintances and exes who cling to the security blanket of mental illness and would rather have a professionally diagnosed excuse to wallow in self-pity and professional victimhood than hold one ounce of self-accountability. Furthermore, that’s just a small percentage of those who bothered to get diagnosed by a medical professional. Most of them are self-diagnosed, self-medicated, self-aggrandizing and self-important. Perhaps I’m in the Bill Maher box now.

I used to be considered a hardcore leftist when I was 18, and now the world has shifted around me, but after all that I’ve lived through in my 31 years, I find the sudden pandemic of mental illness insulting to real hardship and suffering.

What ever happened to private matters? We live in a society of oversharing, sadfishing and sad phishing. It’s not a red flags arms race, perhaps everybody needs to take stock of their lives and realize things aren’t as bad as they seem.

Former Stroud Courier staff member and indie music artist Henry Schecker (‘17) lives in the Poconos. His band Angry Hank has new music out.