Some of my latest work, The Maze

It took Betty Cahn and her family years to get help for her mental illness. How the complex mental health system frustrates efforts to get treatment.

Monday 2/22/2010

by Denise Lockwood, photo by Kat Berger

Brenda Wesley, a petite 57-year-old woman, sits at the kitchen table of her Brown Deer home, her delicate fingers gripping a coffee cup on a grim Sunday afternoon. She stares at her cell phone, willing it to ring. But it doesn’t get the message.

Brenda’s barely had any sleep. She was up all night worrying about Betty Cahn, her 43-year-old younger sister. Betty’s been missing since the police took her to Rogers Memorial Hospital Saturday afternoon.

It’s the middle of January and freezing outside. Brenda thinks of the strange men her sister might be seeking out, the hotels she could be at, the streets she could be walking. She’s probably frightened and all alone. The images twist and turn in Brenda’s mind.

They had talked Betty into going to the hospital to get help for her bipolar disorder after she fell asleep with a cigarette and started a fire. The hole in her mattress was small, but Betty’s problems were as big as ever: taking narcotics she shouldn’t have been prescribed and slipping out of control. The two sisters fought, with Brenda pressing Betty to get help. Now Betty is out there, somewhere, high on prescription medications.

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