Ginny Krystel admits that as a young woman, she didn’t let people know the entire truth about her family.
It’s not that anyone explicitly told her, “Ginny, tell no one; say nothing about your mother’s mental illness.”
That’s because they didn’t have to. There existed then, as there still does today, a stigma about what it meant to have depression, or schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder that all but guaranteed a daughter’s fealty and secrecy.
To nearly the day she died of a stroke at age 83 in 2009, Krystel’s mother remained a vigorous and accomplished woman. She was a proud Skidmore College graduate who sang with operatic quality.
“When she was well, she was dynamic,” Krystel, 60, of Leawood, said.
But the fact that when Phyllis Krystel wasn’t well she suffered depressive episodes so deep that they led to several suicide attempts, hospitalizations and electroconvulsive therapy had always remained a private affair.
“For a long time, when mom was in the hospital and someone asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ I would just say, ‘She’s not feeling well.’” Krystel said. “The problem, one of the issues (of mental illness), is that people don’t want to talk about it. They are embarrassed or ashamed.”
But that was then — before it became clear as it is now that there is barely a family, school or business in the United States untouched by mental illness.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness estimates that one in four adults in the U.S. suffers some measure of mental illness each year. Suicide, which kills more people annually than murder, stands as the third-leading of cause of death for young people ages 18 to 24.
Today Krystel has added her voice to a growing chorus in the Kansas City area now urging people to open up about mental illness, to share their stories and, perhaps in so doing, help free it from the same stigma that in generations past held the realities of divorce, cancer or HIV/AIDS trapped in a world of whispers.
“I’m more open about it now,” Krystel said, “because I feel like we have to be.”
So do many others.