| Te patient usually comes with a companion. The patient looks relaxed, but the companion's eyes betray fear, uncertainty, endless questions. I remember meeting Mark, accompanied by his mother. I remember the inadequacy of the hour spent with them and feeling that ten or one hundred hours would not quench the fire of their pain. Every week, one or two families reenact this scenario in my office. Throughout the country, in hospitals, clinics, and emergency rooms, hundreds more join them. Because the major mental illnesses are what psychiatrists dryly call "familial disorders," many people have gone through the experience before with a parent, sibling, or child. For these family members, the pain is duller but more certain, and may kindle tribal memories of curses, of uncleanliness. For other families, there are no memories, no signposts. There are only hurried, hushed profession- a/s, who seem to distance and b/ame in equal measure. And there is time, passing so much more slowly than in surgical waiting rooms, coronary-care units, or even cancer wards. |
内容加载中，请稍后...
商品评论（0条）