Mental Illness... Where to point the finger?

I was surprised to see how interconnected every social issue of The Glass Castle is with the next. If I were to conjure up a metaphor to represent all of these social issues, it would be a mass of paper clips. Although each paper clip is an individual, it can be easily linked to countless others. Before you know it, you could have an entire strand of them. In many ways, that is how I see my topic of Depression. Yes, it is a mental illness, but it is also a treatable mental illness, that, for many reasons wasn't treated.

Perhaps if some of the other social issues had not been plaguing the family, this problem would have been better addressed and more easily dealt with. If Rex could have left his alcoholism and kept a job for more than a few months, not only would there have been a decent income for the family, but a father in the home for the wife and children. I see the father as the backbone of the family. A husband and father that does not uphold his responsibilities will have a strikingly devastating effect on every other member of the family. We see this happen repeatedly throughout The Glass Castle.

Rose Mary may indeed have had depression even if she wasn't in her poverty stricken, neglectful, and abusive situation. However, it could have been dealt with in a totally different manner, had she had a steady life and decent husband. One startling statistic that I found in my research of this topic was that 80% to 90% of those who get treatment will be relieved of many if not all of the symptoms in only a few weeks. WOW! What a profound difference could have been made on the Wall's family had the mother only had the opportunity to receive treatment for her bi-polar disorder.

These solid facts lead me to beg the question...who or what is to blame for Rose Mary's depression. In other words, what caused her to miss out on such beneficial treatment? I hate to sound like a broken record, but I believe that Rex's alcoholism played a huge role. It brought about the poverty that disabled her financial ability to get help. It also brought about the neglect that kept her in her home for so long, wallowing in her sad thoughts. Not only that, but Rex didn't attempt to understand Rose Mary's problem nearly enough. He simply blew her off as being extremely temperamental. He didn't see her problem as a mental illness, but as a silly weakness.

Additionally, the environment in which the family lived most definitely helped to aggravate Rose Mary's condition. She was left alone for days at a time in a dump of a house, with no money, little food, and a small crowd of young, growing children, in need of her attention. Sadly, Rose Mary needed just as much attention as did her children and sometimes even gave her own needs first priority over them. An example of this can be found it the scene on page 186 where the children find a valuable ring and hope to pawn it to get food for the family. Rose Mary instead decides to keep the ring for her own "self esteem"and allowed her kids go hungry.

Although I would really like to place all of the blame for Rose Mary's condition in one location to make it nice and easy, it simply can't be done. You could chock this problem up to genetics, Rex's Alcoholism, the poverty, neglect, the burden of the children, or Rose Mary herself. There is evidence to support all of those causes and I'm sure that one could argue for a host of others that I haven't mentioned. Whatever way you look at the causes, the tragic fact is that help was available, and she didn't get it. I can't help but wonder how things could have changed if she was able to get treatment for her illness. Would she be on the streets today?? Hmmmmmm....