Yahoo Lifestyle Glenn Close’s Nephew 'Deteriorated Right in Front of Our Eyes' amid Schizoaffective Disorder, His Mom Says (Exclusive)
Calen Pick and his mom Jessie Close wrote a fictionalized account of his struggle with schizoaffective disorder and how they healed through resilience and love
As Jessie Close recalls, her eldest son Calen Pick “was a beautiful, sweet boy.” He played baseball and soccer and loved being outdoors in the Montana woods near their home.
“I had friends but I was shy,” says Calen.
But by 15, he remembers beginning to feel more anxious and moody. “I was probably getting sick or symptomatic years before I was aware of it,” says Calen, now 43. “I would get agitated. I tended to overthink things and was very self-conscious."
From there, Calen, one of three children born to Jessie, sister of actress Glenn Close, grew more isolated. “There was a lot of fear,” he says. “It was scary stuff, which made me feel like I was living in a nightmare. Negative thoughts. Out of control thinking. It was a fairly rapid downward spiral. Probably over four years, which is a long time to think about being scared.”
But nothing prepared Jessie for the day in 1998 when she climbed the stairs to her son's loft studio over the family’s garage. There, she saw the words “Silence You,” painted across the wall in dripping red paint. “It was like, ‘Holy shit,’ what is this?” says Jessie, 71. “He had just deteriorated in front of our eyes.”
The family soon learned that Calen had had a psychotic break. In 1999, when he was 18, he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. (The condition, according to UC Berkeley Professor of Psychology Stephen Hinshaw, "is a combination of the thought disorders of schizophrenia (which can mean hallucinations for example) with the mood disorder of either bipolar or unipolar depression.”
The family's dramatic and emotional story is told in Calen and Jessie’s new book, Silence You, a fictionalized account of what happened after Calen’s diagnosis, as well as Jessie’s diagnosis of bipolar disorder three years later when she was 50 years old. The book details how together, they found healing through resilience and love.
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Calen Pick, Glenn Close and Jessie Close in 1998Related: How A Sister's Cry for Help Led Glenn Close to Change the Way We Talk About Mental Illness
It was a long and circuitous journey to get there. After Calen was admitted to a psychiatric ward, he lived at a halfway house on hospital grounds for two years. “I didn’t get too comfortable there,” he explains.
Finding stability took time — both to find the correct medication (today he is on the antipsychotic Clozapine) and the words to explain what he’d been through. He moved into the guest house (or “the old chicken house,” as Jessie refers to it) on the family’s Montana property and met and married Meg, a therapeutic horseback riding instructor.
He also began taking art classes and started painting again, a passion from childhood. “I feel like making sense of the chaos on the canvas is a cool thing,” he says. “Working on the balance of a painting is therapeutic — and kinda reflects my own search for balance.”
For more on Calen Pick's journey, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.
Together, with his mom and “Aunt Glenn" who co-founded Bring Change to Mind, a non-profit to end the stigma and silence around mental illness in 2010. The family has learned to speak openly of their history with mental illness, hoping they can help others.
“It’s a family fight,” says Hinshaw, who serves on the board of BC2M, about the path to recovery. "In addition to medication and individual therapy, family support is a mainstay.”
As Jessie says, “It’s taken a lot of self-love to get where we are now. it’s a difficult road. When you’re faced with either telling the truth and being compassionate towards others or just staying hidden, I don’t think staying hidden is good for anybody.”
Adds Calen, “Learning about myself and learning to live presently helped me see things in a new way — with more clarity and compassion. I think giving yourself permission to be who you are and show that to other people is important.”
Read the original article on People
