“Where are the Cocoa Puffs?” is a novel written by Karen Winters Schwartz that details a family’s journey through bipolar disorder. The inspiration for the book comes from her own personal experience with a child who was bipolar. Her major points were to humanize those with mental illness and to change the stigma surrounding people who are mentally ill and their families.
What Ms. Winters Schwartz noticed most when going through her ordeal was that most people gave sympathy when she really needed empathy. To her, the sympathy was equivalent to pity because supporters would feel sorry for her and her family instead of trying to understand what they were going through. Through her speech, she tried to make her audience understand that the people and families affected did not choose this lot or are in some way deserving of it, but that mental illness is not controllable.
Another topic discussed was the healthcare given to people with mental illness. It is pretty ridiculous that pharmaceutical companies advertise to anyone who is not a doctor. How would any person be able to go to their doctor and knowledgeably say “I’d rather take Abilify than Cymbalta”? The answer is no one can, and the result is these companies making people think they have depression or are hearing voices. She also railed against the state healthcare system. In New York the only way to get into a mental health hospital for treatment is to wait until someone has a mental breakdown.
I thought her presentation was well worth my time and she accomplished what she set out to do. No one I’m related to has a serious mental health issue, which put me at a distance. Karen Winters Schwartz put me in the shoes of someone who does deal with mental health problems on a daily basis and made me empathize.
