Family wades through depths of mental illness
MIDDLESEX TWP — Steve and Linda Schmitmeyer, sitting on their patio on a sunny September afternoon, are the picture of a happy couple.
But their smiles and easy banter this day come at the end of a long, harrowing road for the Schmitmeyers and their now-grown children.
For years, beginning in 1990, Steve Schmitmeyer was mentally ill, and the Schmitmeyers faced a series of misdiagnoses, baffling behavior, a breakdown and a struggle to hold their family together.
Linda Schmitmeyer, a freelance writer and editor and a former features editor for the Butler Eagle, wrote a book about the experience, “Rambler: A Family Pushes Through the Fog of Mental Illness,” which is being released Tuesday by Artists' Orchard, a small Pittsburgh publisher.
“We're pretty comfortable with the subject matter,” said Linda Schmitmeyer. “We lived through it. We don't have a stigma. We pushed through it, and we are very comfortable talking about the diagnosis.”
“He's my strongest supporter,” she said of her husband.
The book chronicles, Schmitmeyer's worsening spiral which began in 1990 when, at 40 years old, he abruptly quit his job with an engineering society.
Steve said, “It was a rash act,” he said. “I had a disagreement with my boss. It wasn't even a fight.”
Realization that Schmitmeyer was mentally ill didn't happen overnight, said his wife.
“It didn't happen suddenly and it didn't happen all the time,” she said. “He wasn't well. It would be confusing and chaotic when symptoms would flare up.
Initially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, the medications he was given failed to help him and he began obsessing over the engineering society and its leader.
Schmitmeyer, despite having an engineering degree, began going through a series of short-lived jobs. “It was my inability to work with others,” he said.
Finally, a college friend got him a job as a sales representative for plastic injection molding machines, a job he could do from home.
But, his mental landscape became more clouded. He was still obsessed with the engineering society.
“I didn't like the way they were raising money. I couldn't get around that. I was fixated on fixing the engineering society,” he said.
Finally, his behavior at an engineering conference in Detroit led to a stint in the Detroit Psychiatric Institute in 1995.
During this, Linda Schmitmeyer became the sole means of support for their three children, who were all under the age of 10 when her husband became ill.
She said she relied on the support of their families and friends.
She said of her three children — John, Luke and Eleanor — “I tried to keep them on routines.”
Schmitmeyer's illness was then diagnosed as schizoaffective — a combination of schizophrenia symptoms, such as hallucinations or delusions; and mood disorder symptoms, such as depression or mania — and his medications changed in 1998.Linda said, “He's done well since then,” said Linda Schmitmeyer. “It took a little while for the medications to take effect, but he was able to go forward.”Linda said about mental illness, “People don't talk about then. They still don't talk about it.”That was the impetus for her to write her book, a process that took 12 years and at least four drafts.“I was always taking notes during it — little vignettes. In 1999 I wrote a really long document when I was still working at the Butler Eagle, ”she said.Linda Schmitmeyer said the book uses some of his writings during an acute stage of his illness.“He wrote notes to himself and follow-up notes. Data points he'd call them,” she said. “Several chapters include them. It show how hard he worked to get better.”It took her 12 years and multiple drafts to get “Rambler” published, but she feels the effort was worth it.“I wrote the book to help people better understand the nature of a mental illness diagnosis,” she said. “And I think it helped me process a very difficult time and come to terms with the changes brought about by that illness.”Today, Steve works as a polisher at Carbinite Metal Coatings in Renfrew three days a week.He said, “I do what I want. I smoke cigars and drink beers and I rest my mind. I believe in boredom.”
