Everything Calls for Salvation is a remarkable streaming series on the topic of mental illness. It's based on the autobiographical book of the same name by the central character, Daniel, who also composed the screenplay. It's no wonder it rung so true with me, a fellow sailor on the ship of lunatics (an honor really). It's a wide ranging humanization of that corner of the modern mental health system that deals with serious and often poorly understood mental disorders, from the point of diagnosis to... the end. However that should come for us individually.
In 7 episodes spanning the week of Daniel's involuntary commitment we meet a cast of characters consisting of the ill, their doctors, their caretakers, their families, and the world itself. The patients display a wide range of disorders and symptoms and are in various stages of life and treatment. The clinicians are rational, analytical, but sympathetic; their emotional distance thinly veiling a terrifying truth: they can't save us all, they know it, and occasionally they don't even know where to begin because they don't fully understand what afflicts us. The caretakers are human, maybe a little too so, and remind us that having a healthy mind does not necessarily make one decent or moral. The families show us the confusion and pain these conditions can cause those who love us, but also how those loved ones can aggravate our conditions. The environment reminds us how unkind and unaccommodating the world remains to those with unseen disabilities.
Though the emotional tenor of the show is most aptly described as a mixed episode, manic and depressed at the same time, the social commentary plays out in conversational tones, point and counterpoint, like the many conversations on those subjects I've had in support groups and with my family and friends.
A month ago I would not have made it through all 7 episodes, or even 1 I don't think. Not only did I watch, I watched in Italian with subtitles. I have ADHD but it's the least of my problems. The most of my problems is bipolar disorder (bp ii with specifiers), which I have been poorly managing since I first started showing symptoms 25 years ago. Now it badly affects my concentration, focus, short term memory, ability to maintain interest, and enjoyment of life. Unlike Daniel, it was I who sought out professional treatment initially 16 or so years ago, but after 2 months or so I stopped it.
Bipolar disorder is frustratingly difficult to treat. There are a wide range of symptoms and often it is diagnosed with comorbidities. There are 3 classes of medications used to treat it, and I was given two different ones within the same class following an powerful mixed episode that drove me to the ER after days of insomnia, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and hallucinations. Both more or less failed from my perspective. One even made the anxiety and suicidal ideation a bit worse. My case presents with a lot of anxiety. It reduces treatment efficacy and can amplify symptoms. The intensity of it caused me to depersonalize, a deeply discomforting affect I attributed to the medication. I was also going back to school and losing my insurance, and my mood was turning to the "white" side. In 2013 anxious distress was added as a specifier to the DSM, but I long decided I was better off without medication.
Fast forward to New Year's weekend 2023 and now I'm a year and 3 months into treatment and doing much better. I'm taking a different class of medication, a mood stabilizer, and nearly at the max dose. Still, I experience a good amount of variability in my mood and for various reasons I'm depressed and anxious. I'm isolated and lonely as we bipolar people often are. Then, over the course of a 36 hour period, like an assassin waiting in ambush the disorder relentlessly demands I end my life as I rapidly cycle through emotional highs and lows like a shoe in a tumble dryer with an intensity I havnt felt in over a decade.
So why not do it? I'll never be rid of bipolar disorder and it's already taken so much from me. It's laid 3 medications low and confounded 2 smart doctors. Ostensibly I'm not a great person. I've left a very familiar pattern of destruction in my wake over the years. There is no guarantee that despite the best efforts of medical science, the researchers who advance it, the clinical doctors who practice it, and the system that facilitates patient care that I won't give in to those demands and chase my own little bird out of a window someday. Am I really worth the trouble? What about the other sailors aboard Daniel's ship? All have ghosts in their closets, abuse drugs and alcohol, face a cruel life, or seem broken beyond repair. Are they worth it too?
Yes. And therein lies the most important lesson of Everything Calls for Salvation: Salvation is for all of us who wander the asylums of history, even the most hopeless of cases. I survived that New Year's weekend episode and was discouraged after it. However, I realized the mood stabilizer worked well enough and after I typed out a 2 page e-mail to my psych detailing everything I was thinking and feeling during and in the weeks leading up to the episode. He came through with a medication recommendation to better manage the depression which I started a week ago. I also started doing some things to help manage the anxiety while I look for a therapist and just like that I'm watching a streaming series again. I found this one completely randomly too. I can also read books. The medication ramps up over 6 weeks so who knows! Maybe the gym? A jog? The dentist? A new job? Yesterday I sat in the sun just to feel the warmth of it.
Salvation indeed.
In 7 episodes spanning the week of Daniel's involuntary commitment we meet a cast of characters consisting of the ill, their doctors, their caretakers, their families, and the world itself. The patients display a wide range of disorders and symptoms and are in various stages of life and treatment. The clinicians are rational, analytical, but sympathetic; their emotional distance thinly veiling a terrifying truth: they can't save us all, they know it, and occasionally they don't even know where to begin because they don't fully understand what afflicts us. The caretakers are human, maybe a little too so, and remind us that having a healthy mind does not necessarily make one decent or moral. The families show us the confusion and pain these conditions can cause those who love us, but also how those loved ones can aggravate our conditions. The environment reminds us how unkind and unaccommodating the world remains to those with unseen disabilities.
Though the emotional tenor of the show is most aptly described as a mixed episode, manic and depressed at the same time, the social commentary plays out in conversational tones, point and counterpoint, like the many conversations on those subjects I've had in support groups and with my family and friends.
A month ago I would not have made it through all 7 episodes, or even 1 I don't think. Not only did I watch, I watched in Italian with subtitles. I have ADHD but it's the least of my problems. The most of my problems is bipolar disorder (bp ii with specifiers), which I have been poorly managing since I first started showing symptoms 25 years ago. Now it badly affects my concentration, focus, short term memory, ability to maintain interest, and enjoyment of life. Unlike Daniel, it was I who sought out professional treatment initially 16 or so years ago, but after 2 months or so I stopped it.
Bipolar disorder is frustratingly difficult to treat. There are a wide range of symptoms and often it is diagnosed with comorbidities. There are 3 classes of medications used to treat it, and I was given two different ones within the same class following an powerful mixed episode that drove me to the ER after days of insomnia, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and hallucinations. Both more or less failed from my perspective. One even made the anxiety and suicidal ideation a bit worse. My case presents with a lot of anxiety. It reduces treatment efficacy and can amplify symptoms. The intensity of it caused me to depersonalize, a deeply discomforting affect I attributed to the medication. I was also going back to school and losing my insurance, and my mood was turning to the "white" side. In 2013 anxious distress was added as a specifier to the DSM, but I long decided I was better off without medication.
Fast forward to New Year's weekend 2023 and now I'm a year and 3 months into treatment and doing much better. I'm taking a different class of medication, a mood stabilizer, and nearly at the max dose. Still, I experience a good amount of variability in my mood and for various reasons I'm depressed and anxious. I'm isolated and lonely as we bipolar people often are. Then, over the course of a 36 hour period, like an assassin waiting in ambush the disorder relentlessly demands I end my life as I rapidly cycle through emotional highs and lows like a shoe in a tumble dryer with an intensity I havnt felt in over a decade.
So why not do it? I'll never be rid of bipolar disorder and it's already taken so much from me. It's laid 3 medications low and confounded 2 smart doctors. Ostensibly I'm not a great person. I've left a very familiar pattern of destruction in my wake over the years. There is no guarantee that despite the best efforts of medical science, the researchers who advance it, the clinical doctors who practice it, and the system that facilitates patient care that I won't give in to those demands and chase my own little bird out of a window someday. Am I really worth the trouble? What about the other sailors aboard Daniel's ship? All have ghosts in their closets, abuse drugs and alcohol, face a cruel life, or seem broken beyond repair. Are they worth it too?
Yes. And therein lies the most important lesson of Everything Calls for Salvation: Salvation is for all of us who wander the asylums of history, even the most hopeless of cases. I survived that New Year's weekend episode and was discouraged after it. However, I realized the mood stabilizer worked well enough and after I typed out a 2 page e-mail to my psych detailing everything I was thinking and feeling during and in the weeks leading up to the episode. He came through with a medication recommendation to better manage the depression which I started a week ago. I also started doing some things to help manage the anxiety while I look for a therapist and just like that I'm watching a streaming series again. I found this one completely randomly too. I can also read books. The medication ramps up over 6 weeks so who knows! Maybe the gym? A jog? The dentist? A new job? Yesterday I sat in the sun just to feel the warmth of it.
Salvation indeed.
