Loneliness Doesn’t Have To Destroy Life

Now that Ted Kaczynski has pleaded guilty to hiding out in a Montana shack for 20 years and building bombs out of wood, it’s safe to say this: He should have bought a pickup truck instead.

Having hung around men for decades, I know many who indulge in the fantasy of running away to Montana and living in a shack because life is too tough.

They have the shack decorated. They are eating venison sandwiches on the hand-hewn deck.

Men truly and deeply imagine a cabin in the mountains when they sit trapped like marmots in boring meetings.

Unfortunately, Kaczynski imagined the entire fate of the developed world hinged on his busywork in that cabin. His catastrophic fantasies led to tragic results. Clearly, he needs to spend the rest of his life in jail.

Kaczynski is a man with serious mental problems. But then again, all kinds of men have serious mental problems. Just as their wives do.

So, what’s the difference between a Unabomber and just another messed-up guy?

After spending an evening the other night listening to a couple of doctors discuss the warning signs of depression and serious mental neurosis, I learned the difference has to do first with the chemicals in your brain and second with how you deal with warped thinking.

Kaczynski clearly had some bad chemistry in his brain. And, when he thought about the cards he had been dealt - Harvard education, privileged family, good career, he wrongly decided it was all too horrible to imagine.

Off to the cabin he went. Ted Kaczynski’s version of getting away from it all in Montana was truly twisted, but I think many other men have traveled a few miles down a similar road.

Kaczynski got the headlines for going off the deep end. Many other men just spend restless nights and listless days struggling to cope with their own mental state with about the same amount of support, or lack of it, as Kaczynski.

At the forum in Spokane a few nights ago to discuss issues related to depression and mental health, these startling statistics were shared. About 17 million people will experience a degree of depression this year. Half will never be diagnosed or receive adequate treatment.

That leaves a lot of sad, lonely, out-of-it guys out there in their own version of a Montana cabin.

The maddening thing is that it doesn’t have to be that way. Drugs and therapy are available to help people cope with serious mental disorders.

“In fact, 80 to 90 percent of people with major depressive dissorders can be treated effectively. They can get better,” said Dr. John Fagen, a family practice doctor in the Valley Rockwood Clinic, who spoke at the forum.

Doctors say getting help begins with recognizing the symptoms of a severe mental episode.

A man needs professional help if in the course of two weeks he suffers from three or more of these symptoms: feeling downhearted, crying spells, insomnia, weight loss, lack of concentration, helplessness, irritability, feelings of worthlessness, irrational thoughts, not enjoying things as before, or being suicidal.

If you or a man you care about takes the test and scores a three or higher, it’s time for Prozac and a counselor.

Then, things most often will begin looking up.

“People don’t think they can ever feel better, but they can,” said Dr. Paul Domitor, a clinical psychologist who explained the way therapy works:

“When people are experiencing clinical depression, their thoughts are very distorted. They may be extremely critical of themselves. They may set criteria for success that no one could meet. Even as they are walking to the King of Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize, they are saying, ‘It’s not good enough,’” he said.

The key to talk therapy is to get people to tell themselves something else.

It’s like changing a tape that runs over and over in your mind. As Dr. Domitor explained, “The reality is that we all can say, ‘I’m pretty good at some things, and not so good at others, just like everybody else.’”

Yet people who are demoralized and mentally spiralling into a dark place, often can’t see the simple truth that they have lost perspective. Ted Kaczynski clearly lost it.

Loneliness keeps people, well, alone. They stop talking to others. They listen to their own bad tapes.

A good doctor, the right prescription and maybe even going to talk to the sales guy about the four-wheel drive can help. Drugs and doctor first, but the new truck could be a step.

Even as a guy imagines the truck taking him off to the western wilderness, a certain reality would set in. Like the payments.

That will keep you around people at work.

And you would still need to pick up the kids after piano lessons.

Before you know it, you would have a life, where your thoughts were back in bounds, where people likely would care about you and want to help you find a doctor and not end up like Ted Kaczynski.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the editor of The Spokesman-Review. His column appears each Sunday on Perspective.