Preventing and Recovering from Relapse: Writer Robert Lundin shares his experience

By Alexis Maislen

Robert Lundin never expected to be in the place he is today. The Kenyon College graduate, who spent his junior year abroad at Exeter University in England, suffered his first manic episode while a graduate student at Vanderbilt University. This would begin his 14-year journey struggling with the harrowing peaks, valleys, and psychosis of manic depression. A journey that subsequently lead to a new career as a freelance journalist, a co-author of the book Don’t Call Me Nuts: Coping with the Stigma of Mental Illness, and as an editor of the Awakenings Review, a literary magazine publishing the writings of people with mental illness.

Lundin, originally diagnosed as manic-depressive, struggled for years before a psychiatrist solved the missing piece of the puzzle making the diagnosis schizoaffective disorder and prescribing an anti-psychotic. Lundin told his story exuberantly with animated gestures at the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance Chicago chapter’s 2003 symposium on “Preventing Relapse.”

A representative from the publications department of the University of Chicago Department of Psychiatry where he serves as an editor, Lundin wore a preppie tweed jacket and khacki pants.

“When I first started speaking at a conference like this, I might have had a panic attack right in front of you,” he said.

Lundin became aware of his mood disorder superficially back in Tennessee when he was in high school. He experimented with alcohol and marijuana—where he had a bad psychotic episode. Thus, every year afterward he would struggle with psychosis by himself until the day came in 1976 at business school when he was diagnosed with manic depression. But even, then half the mystery was left unsolved. Until in 1991, he met a doctor at Evansville Baptist Hospital in Indiana—he showed up there in handcuffs after a police officer stopped him for erratic driving. The doctor diagnosed him with schizoeffective prescribed Tegretol, an anti-psychotic, and it worked along with the Lithium he already took.

Lundin titled his presentation “Relapse and Recovery: Two Sides of the Same Coin” because it explains the dynamics of struggle that often plague people with mental illnesses.

“I have had moments of relapse and moments of recovery—that’s why I call it two sides of the same coin. My relapse in Indiana began a new career for me after years of unemployment,” said Lundin.

Lundin moved to a small apartment in Glen Ellyn, Illinois to recover from his episode. He kept the place a mess—cockroaches crawled from the walls. Then, one day he walked outside his apartment and saw some repair crews drilling a big pit in the sidewalk. So, he dug out his camera and snapped. He started snapping photographs of people all over town and sticking them anonymously under the local paper’s door at night. And, the paper ran a few of them. Eventually, he mustered up the courage to introduce himself to the editor and began accepting assignments. He found a job at another small town paper and thrived for awhile—at least he thought he was thriving. After awhile, his editor let him go. He kept going to doctors, trying new treatments and medication adjustments.

“I chose freelance journalism because you are judged by your tearsheets,” he said.

After awhile, he showed his tearsheets to the Tribune and became there Oakbrook correspondent as a reporter and photographer. The Illinois Press Association even awarded him a statewide first place distinction for news photography.

Somewhere along the way he became interested in advocacy—how his story could help the millions that still suffer because they are afraid to seek treatment for fear of stigma or lack of knowledge. He joined the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Currently he serves on the AMI of Illinois board of directors, is president of the AMI of Illinois Consumer Council, and serves as an executive committee member of the National Consumer Council.

Today, Lundin works with Dr. Patrick Corrigan in the psychiatry department at the University of Chicago developing publications to help people cope with the diagnosis of mental illness. Together they have authored a book: Don’t Call Me Nuts: Coping with the Stigma of Mental Illness.

Ironically, it was Lundin’s belief in using the arts and writing as a healing tool that launched the next part of his career.

“Today, seventeen years into my illness, I yet struggle with the subtle difference between 'am I a manic-depressive?' and 'am I a man who suffers from manic-depression?' Writing and the arts help the mentally ill cope, perhaps as an outlet for anxiety, perhaps as a vehicle for self-discovery. For people whose goals, ideals, and dignity are uniformly squashed, there is thirst for positive recognition,” he wrote in one of his many articles on the mental health web sites.

In 1996, Lundin and others on AMIs board began the Awakenings Project. Using Kay Redfield Jamison’s book Touched with Fire as a base, this is a project devoted to encouraging people to create artistically or musically. They have worked with galleries across the state to organize art openings for artists suffering with mental illness. And, most recently he began publishing The Awakenings Review, a literary magazine publishing essays, poetry, screenplays, fiction by writers with mental illnesses.

To find out more about The Awakenings Project or submit writing to The Awakenings Review, contact Lundin at (708) 614-2496 or at rklundin@uchicago.edu.

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