(5/2023) The Miracle Worker tells the story of Anne Sullivan, a nineteenth century teacher who would not accept parents’ lack of understanding the needs of their daughter, Helen Keller. Helen had been deaf, mute, and blind from infancy, was not fully able to communicate her needs, nor to understand how to interact with her family and the world around her. In 1887, when Helen was seven years old, Anne Sullivan, age 20, was hired as a live-in teacher to provide Helen with education and social skills. Anne was a recent graduate from the Perkins School for the Blind. No one expected progress, Helen’s parents simply reached a point where they could not cope with her erratic behavior. Everyone was at a loss due to their limited ability to communicate social norms to Helen.

Anne created a routine of daily tasks for Helen, hoping to spark mutual understanding. Anyone who has seen the movie The Miracle Worker with Anne Bancroft as Anne Sullivan, and Patty Duke as Helen Keller, surely remembers the scene at the water pump. Anne is repeatedly using American Sign Language to spell w-a-t-e-r into Helen’s palm while pumping water from the family’s well. Suddenly, Helen gets it! She fully understands the pump, the pump handle moving, and the water coming out to the spout. She fully understands that the sign language gestures Anne is showing to her are communications. Helen takes Anne’s hand, and spells w-a-t-e-r back to her. Helen is instantly c-o-n-n-e-c-t-e-d to this person who simply seconds before was someone pushing her around and making her do stuff. From chaos and frustration comes a plan. With patience and perseverance comes success. From darkness, the light of understanding.

We find this barrier-crossing true story so compelling that we have told and retold it for over a century.

A lot of the stories from history that involve health care, or lack of care, are pretty dismal. They tend to be stories of the general public just throwing up their hands, not knowing what to do, and letting the state take over, or the church, or somebody to please take it off my hands. They are often about the devastating results for the patient. In fairness, care giving is exhausting in the best of circumstances. When you have no possible path to communicating with a person who has a physical condition, developmental disability or a mental illness, going it alone is about as scary as life can be.

Consider the recent news story of John Fetterman. He, his family, and doctors have worked to find solutions to his own clinical depression. It is a contemporary tale of hope. It’s a tale of how we can address our own issues, and really take care of them by stepping out of the zone of "keeping up appearances".

Any of us can face stress, developmental delays, or mental imbalance, in someone we know or ourselves. Some causes we don’t commonly talk about are sneaky—frontal lobe underdevelopment, poor brain development because of lack of good nutrition, addiction from having one too many prescriptions of an opioid. In Helen Keller’s case, she had scarlet fever as an infant which left her with no obvious way of communicating. Her behavior as she grew became erratic, and thus scary to her family. It is easier to look at behaviors as successes or failures and chalk them up to personal responsibility, rather than looking into a health issue. The brain is invisible. We think we know by a person’s actions what they are thinking.

From January 1, 2023 to April 22, 2023 there have been 12,920 gun related deaths in the US. Mental illness is a main topic after the fact for mass shootings, 169 in 112 days, and for suicide, 7,392 is 112 days.

Before the fact, every story has a root, an early warning point where some form of mental or physical health issue can be suspect.

Addressing our mental health and physical safety needs, basic steps include being open to improvements in our own education, communication between the mental health and law enforcement professionals, and communication between us (the public) and the professionals who commit to service for all. They deserve our input about how to address mental health conditions that impact all of us. County health and police departments with a good working relationship can better meet pubic needs before they become public crises. Early intervention is better for successful treatment, and for lessoning the burden on law enforcement, whose members may not have the training and resources to deal with mental health crises.

We have a County Health Department. We need a County Police department. Five Maryland counties have larger populations than Frederick. Each of these has a county police department. Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard, Montgomery, and Prince George’s Counties each have a Chief of Police who is answerable to the County Executive. They are subject to hiring and firing policies, not an every four year election frenzy. In counties with a police department, the elected position of a Sheriff heads a separate department with a focused, limited set of duties.

To truly partner with health care providers and the police, we need to be able to ask for help in the first place. Social conditioning tells us that option #1 is always "go it alone, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, suck it up, take it like a man, boys will be boys". Each of these phrases are ways we say, "whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger." They also say "don’t bother me with your problems."

We are supposed to debate about how to solve these bigger problems of society, but we have to recognize we have multiple ways to find solutions. It can start with simple conversations, remembering that you won’t know what is really going on unless you take the time for conversation. The brain is invisible. You may not see it, but by reaching out you might bring someone a light.