Swanee Hunt

I am supporting Barack Obama for a very personal reason.

When my mother married my father, he already had a grown son, Hassie. He was Dad’s look-alike, with fair hair and skin, blue eyes, and a tall, sturdy frame. As an adolescent, Hassie was brilliant but difficult. As a result, he was sent to Culver Military Academy, but even that rigor couldn’t prevent his psychotic break. In his early twenties he was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. After years in physical restraints, with countless insulin and shock treatments, my father’s firstborn son and heir apparent was lobotomized.

The state-of-the-art frontal lobe surgery to quell aggression was performed on eighteen thousand Americans during the 1940s, since psychotropic drugs that would transform the care of psychotic patients weren’t discovered until a few years later. The procedure left Hassie less violent, but he still clenched his fists and snarled as he muttered angrily to himself about “vicious killers” lurking around him.

Soon after my mother married my father, her heart broke when we met Hassie in a mental hospital, despite the red brick buildings and manicured lawns. She urged Dad to “bring Hassie home.” And so Hassie moved in, along with a male nurse strong enough to his handle outbursts. We adjusted to life with a psychotic brother.

Hassie was tormented by internal demons that he often projected onto his surroundings—although, given the shock treatments, his fear that our oriental carpets were wired made some sense. At dinner, we took our places at the long, graciously carved table in a room with walls covered in painted scenes from American history. For the next quarter of an hour, we’d hear the hallway floorboards creak with an occasional step. Then Hassie’s hefty form would appear in the arched dining-room entry. There he’d hesitate, his eyes moving from side to side as he looked at us silently. “Hello, Hassie,” one of us would say. “Dinner’s ready. Come on in.”

His thin lips would curl in a grimace of acknowledgment that doubled for a smile. Abruptly, he’d extend his leg in an awkward motion, with his toe pointed as he stretched across a dangerous piece of rug, his arms out for balance. A lunge forward. He was unharmed. He’d steady and straighten himself. After a few more strategic but clumsy movements, he’d set himself down safely in his chair on Dad’s right, across from me. There he’d stare at his place setting, occasionally mumbling under his breath.

Hassie loomed large in our family, as the tragedy always in our midst that no financial fortune could fix. Always seeking a cure, Dad enlisted Jeanne Dixon, a popular futurist, but even that star of the National Enquirer couldn’t help. My father was left with only his own occasional assertions to acquaintances that “Hassie is well now,” as if saying so could make it true. But visitors discovered otherwise when Hassie didn’t respond to an offered handshake, keeping his arm firmly at his side as he whispered warnings to the intruder.

With no professional help to interpret his illness, Mother and we four kids just tried to treat him like one of the family. But who could deny that he was different? In more than a decade of living under the same roof, I don’t remember ever touching my half-brother, although Mother later described her astonished appreciation as one day she found me kneeling at his feet, tying his shoelaces.

Who was this imposing figure, appearing occasionally like a third parent in our annual Christmas card family portrait? Hassie was an embarrassment to be explained to my girlfriends who came to spend the night. Hassie was the strong, angry man standing around the corner, whom I feared. Hassie was a hounded refugee from pernicious, evil delusions I couldn’t imagine, even in my worst nightmares. Hassie was a predictor of genetic predisposition to mental illness that I might carry. Hassie was my brother, whom I cared for, but with precious few moments of believing that care could be returned.

Having looked closely at his plan, I’m convinced that Barack Obama understands that health care must include the pain of mental health. It doesn’t require only new money; there’s a tremendous amount that will be saved with prevention and coordination. Besides, we pay dearly for jails and shelters for mentally people who are untreated.

But most of all, I can’t imagine how horrible it must be to have a family member at home suffering as we saw Hassie suffer and not be able to afford today’s drugs, which can control most of those symptoms Hassie had to live with. That’s why I’m committed to a new administration that will reform our health care system so that it cares for the mentally ill across our country -- and the families that love them.