It Took Me 41 Years, But I Finally Made It

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    In March, 1967, I was accepted into the doctoral program at U.C. Berkeley. I was still finishing my master’s degree in social work and was the first person to be “fast-tracked” into the new program for promising young students who had the aptitude for PhD level work.

     I was young and I was smart and I was dedicated and I was ready to undertake a research project that would make a real contribution to the world. There was only one problem. I had very little experience of life in the real world.

     I had been in school since I was 5 years old (I wasn’t a terribly bright nursery schooler back then, but my working parents needed some place where I would be safe when they were on the job.) In 1967 I was 24 years old. Berkeley in the 1960s was an exciting place to be. Even in the halls of academia we were dealing with the realities of the Viet Nam war, the emergence of Feminism, Civil rights, and Black Power (I met Huey Newton, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party. His brother, Mel, was in my social work class.)

     However, one semester as a doctoral student made it clear to me that I was being asked to develop a research study based on very little actual life experience. Of course I wasn’t any different than my contemporaries. However, I decided to drop out of the program (much to the embarrassment of my advisor who had sponsored me and to my parents who were starting to get used to having “a doctor in the family.”)

     I never regretted the decision, but I often thought of returning to school and getting the doctorate I had passed over. Through the years I had learned a good deal more about life and even felt I had some real research I wanted to engage. The time never was right. The thought of “school” wasn’t that appealing and the cost was prohibitive.

     What changed my mind was my experience as a therapist working with men. I’m sure part of the reason I picked the work that has engaged my life came from my experiences with my father growing up in Southern California.

     My Dad was an aspiring writer who never was able to “make it.” When I was 5 years old, he had a “nervous breakdown,” tried to kill himself, and spent the next 12 years in a mental hospital. My interest in “mental illness and mental health” was based on my confusion about what happened to my father and my fear that whatever it was would likely happen to me.

     But for most of my life I buried my fear and denied the possibility that I might be suffering from the same kind of depression that had affected my father. Even though the professional literature has increasingly recognized hereditary aspects of mood disorders and many of my other family members have been diagnosed, I resolutely insisted it couldn’t happen to me. I was too smart, I told myself. I knew too much about mental health and illness.

     My denial began to crumble when my wife and I visited a alcohol treatment program for a friend and had occasion to take a test for depression. My wife scored high (indicating depression), but I scored low. She immediately recognized that she had been suffering for years, got into treatment and changed a long-standing problem that had kept her from fully enjoying her life.

     She suggested that I might be suffering from the same thing. Of course, I denied that I had a problem and pointed out that I had a low score on the “official” depression assessment questionnaire. My wife suggested, in a very nice way, that perhaps the test was wrong. She pointed out that I was often moody, irritable, withdrawn, angry, blaming, and basically unhappy and miserable a lot of the time.

     I pointed out that I was a professional therapist. She was not. The questionnaire was based on the best science available and was much more accurate than her “intuitive feeling” that I was depressed. She shook her head, gave me a sad look, and walked out of the room. It took me another year to accept the fact that I was depressed and eventually sought out and received help.

     My life improved dramatically and our relationship began to deepen and grow closer. Without my continual anger and blame (which I had always assumed was justified—“who wouldn’t be angry when someone is always treating you that way”—our relationship began to heal. I never forgot Carlin’s comment: “Maybe the test was wrong.” Six years ago I decided to go back to graduate school.

     This time I knew what I wanted to study. I had a lot of life experience to base it on. I was determined to find out if there was a better test for assessing male depression that would allow people like me to recognize that we had a problem and guide us to the help we needed.

     I developed my own depression scale, based on my personal experience, and with the thousands of men (and women) I had treated over the years. Testing it scientifically was not as easy as I had hoped. There are some definite advantages to doing doctoral level research when you are 60 years old. Life experience does count for something. There are also some definite disadvantages.

     The young, lightening fast mind that I had when I was 24 had slowed down over the years. I had trouble remembering complicated research studies I had read only hours before. Understanding high-level statistics, never one of my strong suits, proved to be a real barrier to my 60-something brain. I thought many times of chucking it in. “Why did I need a doctorate anyway? I’ve been doing fine without it all these years.”

     But something kept me going. My own doggedness, my unwillingness to give up, my desire to prove something to myself, a supportive wife, and my deep belief that I could contribute something of value—all kept be pushing ahead.

     Yesterday, I heard the words I had thought I might never hear, “You passed. Congratulations.” I had promised myself I would make it before my 65th birthday. I made it with some months to spare. What goals do you have that you want to accomplish while you’re alive? Anything you dropped that you said you’d return to some day? I learned it’s never too late to make it happen.