Rose Styron

It was pretty terrible because we were so baffled the first time. Our emotions ricocheted from feeling sad for him to angry for us. We felt rejected and guilty for whatever we had done that was causing him to reject us. We are a very close family and the kids rallied around all the time, so we had each other to talk to, and that saved us from the impact being too great. We talked over what we saw as his recession from reality. or his delusions, which all had to do with him being a really bad man who was going to ruin all of us if he hadn't already. We wanted to make him feel better and we felt worse because we couldn't. We became progressively more horrified. Each of our children and I had a different take on it. We didn't know that until later, but we each felt personally guilty, rejected, and helpless to him.

How did you persuade your husband to get help?
First we had some help from other friends, who were writers and close friends of ours, who had either been through incredible mood swings themselves since childhood or had friends who had real problems and suicides. They told me I had to get him to a psychiatrist. But, I couldn't persuade the doctor to take him to the hospital. Finally, one dreadful night I called the doctor and told him that I couldn't keep Bill at home any more. It was preposterous. I couldn't keep track of the medicines he was, or was not, taking. I couldn't even go to sleep for five minutes because he might not be here when I woke up. Luckily, we did have a daughter nearby. Once my daughter and I said 'we're going to take you to the hospital in the morning,' there was this tremendous relief. We realized that he wanted to go, too.

How did the hospital help your husband?
Chiefly it was the haven it gave him: he didn't have to worry about not responding to the outside world or to people close to him. He could just give up and be within himself and know that somebody else was going to call the shots. He knew he couldn't commit suicide, because the circumstances were not there for him. Initially it seemed to me that he had gotten much worse. They put him on so much medication that it began to look like 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.' But that passed quickly and in a few weeks he began to recover.