Mother and Father came to me specifically
and said, please, please.
There was no one else that could've handled it.
I mean, they said, please do not,
do not desert them and what I can see is,
is that everyone else in my family has deserted them.
Maybe that was too big of a chore for him.
(CRIES) No, it's absolutely not.
I never thought I would be doing this by myself without you guys.
I never in a million years thought
that my siblings would not be by my side.
(THEME MUSIC)
Where schizophrenia is diagnosed between age 17 and 24,
it's a tragic story.
To be the part of the Galvin family, is to be part of a tragedy.
This mutation was present in every person in that family
who had schizophrenia.
They might hear voices.
They can command them to do things.
Command them to do things.
Throwing a cat into a bonfire. Dismembered a dog in the bath tub.
This family gave us hope
that there might be a chance to cure schizophrenia.
He shot her first and then he shot himself.
It all started to fall apart.
My brothers were falling ill, they were losing their minds.
They were losing their minds.
What happened in our family is very rare.
Six siblings out of 12 to have schizophrenia,
half the family.
That's rare, you don't see that.
I mean if you look at the chronology it's unbelievable.
Donald, you know, I was two when Donald became ill,
then Jim went to the hospital,
and then Peter went to the hospital,
and then Matthew went to the hospital
and then Joseph.
In the, in the middle of all that, Brian committed suicide
and murdered his girlfriend.
And it's only been over the course of a lifetime
that you can look back on it and go, oh, my...
Holy crap (CHUCKLES), how did this happen?
Peter Eugene Galvin, son of Dr. D.W. Galvin.
We were all healed.
Gave something the doctors had to heal us with,
they tell us what to do with medications,
we take them and shut up.
I don't...
I don't need to be looked after,
I can look after myself.
In my own home,
I do what the doctors say.
They tell me to take my medication.
I take, I take it faithfully.
No.
I'm all healed up with all the doctors and nurses.
I'm all healed up
and I'm saint Peter who works at the state hospital
with all five doctors.
Peter was so non compliant,
he just would not abide by what the doctors were asking him to do,
he just would not do it.
He was in and out of the hospital, I have no idea how many times,
hundreds, I would guess.
Get stabilised, go home,
my parents would try to get him established in an apartment
and he would blow it,
within a few months.
And this was just this repetitive revolving door with Peter,
in and out and in and out and in and out,
stopping taking the medications
because of the way they make you feel.
And then we would get a call from the police.
No, I haven't.
"Police reports indicate that he was charged with two counts of assault
in the second degree against a police officer."
No.
"On 5/18/91, a theft of cigarettes had occurred from a 7/11 store.
Someone chased Mr. Galvin down and got the cigarettes back,
Mr. Galvin then sat in front of the store and refused to leave.
When the police approached him,
he began swinging his fists and fighting injuring both officers.
He punched both in the face,
during his trip to corrections, he was yelling and incoherent."
No, I stay...
...clean and I'm an EMT and I save lives.
He was refusing to be committed to Pueblo,
so he was fighting against his own self
and I was trying to convince him to plead incompetent,
plead mental, mentally ill.
Why couldn't the Boulder County call Pueblo,
and talk about Peter's condition?
I mean, that's where the disconnect is in the system.
If you have a family member who is fighting for you,
I think that that's-- that makes a difference,
they're denied by courts,
they're denied by mental health facilities,
they are not able to keep them in treatment,
the family member will have to petition in the court,
they'll have to go through the County Attorney,
they will have to go through a legal process.
I had to go get Peter's court records and say look,
he has a severe mental illness,
(CHUCKLES) I, I really had to convince the courts that he did,
it wasn't like,
they were just willing to take the piles of hospitalizations.
I mean, we had to go to great efforts
within the Boulder County Judicial system
to convince them that he had severe mental illness.
Peter is a very interesting person and he's fun to talk to.
He was so chronically cheerful,
but he could be a very difficult patient.
He can be violent, he can be agitated,
he can be very manicky, he can be grandiose.
I'm St. Peter,
the holy saint who was crucified on the cross.
I had (UNSURE OF WORD) right in my hands,
I died on the cross with Jesus
and I saved his life too.
It's upsetting because you love Peter
and then when he turns on you, it feels like a betrayal,
but we eventually and particularly of the support of his family,
um, we were able to get Peter in a good place and get him stabilised.
My mom said, "Oh, Mary, don't take this on, do not take this on."
And I said, "I have to try, or I won't know."
Mary took Peter in and tried to do whatever was right for him,
if she could help him,
get clothes and find jobs and whatever.
I saw real progress,
I mean, really, I... Peter held down a job in Boulder,
he lived in his own apartment
and I don't know how many years that went on,
but he was pretty high-functioning,
but he was taking medication and going to therapy combined.
His doctors talked to me
at one point and said that he's extremely brittle,
unresponsive to the medications
and that they would eventually stop working,
and that they felt that it was time for Peter
to go back to Pueblo where somebody with his severity
of the brain disorder would get better treatment.
So, basically, the doctors were telling me to give up
on my attempt to save him.
Yeah.
I didn't like it.
I was the main patient at the hospital
and I did what they said to do.
Pete was, he was very unstable,
he was in and out of the hospital, we would get him out,
uh, he would de-stabilize, he would come back in
and I don't know how many admissions we had where he came back in.
And then it was like, well, okay,
let's-- we'll, do the shock therapy now.
The state of Colorado requires Peter to have ECT,
because when he doesn't have it,
he is a danger to himself and perhaps others.
There's always been something to Electric Shock Therapy.
And it's been scary and it has a bad reputation.
The way we do it now is much more judicious.
We use anaesthesia,
I, I think if you can come up with a treatment,
and it is electric shock therapy, and that what works,
then that's what you stick with.
I get...
head-shock treatment right in the temples.
They get, they knock me out
with their beds on the shock treatment tables.
I feel much better,
like, a brand new man that takes care of his doctors.
I sing them songs
and I do everything that I can think of for them,
because they're fine doctors.
In Peter's case,
it really helped significantly with his manic,
manic type of symptoms that he had.
The biggest issues that I have dealt with,
with electric shock therapy is memory.
And when you talk to Peter,
uh, I always describe Peter's talking in a loop.
He will, he will have a story, he'll have a loop
that he'll talk to you about.
Maybe someday, we'll understand better exactly
how electric shock therapy actually works
and we can use something that's much less of invasive
and doesn't require the same drawbacks.
They, there needs to be some progress
in the way they treat the mentally ill.
I, I keep hearing from Peter
and one of the most painful things is the fact
that they do these shock treatments on him.
(SIGHS) I'm just thinking about
what he's been and the pain he's been through.
I can't even imagine.
(PLAYING FLUTE)
So much tragedy in some ways has been brought to the family,
because of this disease.
And to me, losing my brother's closest to me in age
to this disease, has had a big impact on my life.
It's, it's painful.
What, what my family has gone through, it's horrific.
But there is hope.
Hi.
-How are you doing? -Okay.
I remember when we did our, our first main study.
Uh, I had about 350 families, something like that.
And the Galvin's was the largest.
At that first visit,
there were at least four of them that were there
and what I remember is,
them marching around through the kitchen, saying,
things that didn't make sense.
They were essentially a gold mine,
because the larger the family,
and the more the number of affected people in the family,
the more likely we can find something
that's significantly related to the illness.
Rob Freeman was a colleague of mine,
he was doing genetic research that was related,
so, I introduced him to the Galvin family.
There were a lot of Galvins.
Mimi from the start was a very impressive woman.
Don Junior and all his brothers were sitting on a bench,
for myself and my research team to be begin to interview,
to draw blood for genetic sampling.
Better research on mental illness was Mimi's hope.
The family had clearly been devastated by schizophrenia.
They wanted to do some genetic testing on the family.
I was ready to help.
I never thought of the overall big picture,
until the testing came along.
I remember giving the blood sample.
Advances are being made in genetic treatments all the time.
Maybe if, someday they'll find a cure
for these mental health issues.
And maybe that can help my brothers as well.
That whole schizophrenia thing was my mother's idea of notion
that I'm mentally ill.
I may have been a little schizophrenic,
because I was with a lot of people that were schizophrenic,
but that doesn't make me a schizophrenic.
Every human being has genetic blueprint called DNA.
Researchers hope to map the genes found on the chromosomes,
that could be a fundamental advance towards a cure,
for genetically linked illness
such as schizophrenia, cancer and heart disease.
In the early 1990's,
scientists all of the world hit on the idea
that you could make a map of the entire genome in human beings.
There was a great sense of competitiveness.
Each of us wanted to be the first to find the gene
that causes schizophrenia.
Once we knew what "the gene" was,
we would be able to target the medication towards that gene,
the magic bullet.
So, we went gene hunting and identified a gene.
And the name of the gene was CHRNA-7.
So, we sequenced the whole genome in the Galvin family.
They had one mutation that really stood out,
that was present in all affected siblings.
It was the gene that was expressed in the brain,
it was the SHANK-2 gene,
and was important for brain and development.
So that, we knew we were on the right track. (LAUGHS)
SHANK-2 is a very important gene,
it's not a complete determinate of schizophrenia,
but multiple discoveries like that changed our view
of what we were looking at in schizophrenia in general.
For example, having an abusive childhood
where you, where you've had a lot of trauma.
That trauma's doing something to the genetic material on the brain
and maybe causing genes to be expressed in a different way.
"Church officials have reportedly sent the names
of 49 additional priests
accused of child sexual abuse to prosecutors
bringing the total number of priests
named by the archdiocese so far to 87.
NBC's (UNSURE OF NAME) has the story."
When the story about the catholic church and the priests
abusing young boys broke across the world,
my mother was watching television with Donald.
"Priest during the 1980,
or even before were knowingly assigned to active ministry,
after there had been credible allegations of child abuse."
And he told my mother,
that he had been sexually abused by Father Freudenstein.
Mmm.
My mother, of course, believed him,
because he was lucid and on his medicine
and, and just because they have schizophrenia,
doesn't mean they just make stuff like that up,
That would not be something Don would hallucinate or make up.
The priest, oh, there are a lot of them,
a lot of priests over the years,
um, most of them like smoking cigars as I recall (CHUCKLES)
that stunk up the house.
Um, but they would come over a lot.
There was one, one priest, his name was Freudenstein,
they call him Father Freudenstein.
I was not particularly fond of him. (CHUCKLES)
It's something about his personality,
the way he carried himself, maybe it was his demeanour
and I kinda distanced myself from him.
Don, Jim and Brian all would go on these excursions.
I remember Father Freudenstein was picking them up in a station wagon,
saying goodbye to them,
and then they'd come home three days later.
We didn't think any of these priests would be doing anything
illicit or wrong.
What I heard from my mother and my brothers
is that he became sexually abusive towards my oldest brother Don.
And then suddenly, it was like click, click, click.
Well, that must have happened to Jim too,
because what else would have caused Jim to sexually abuse me?
So...
We, we came to that conclusion without first-hand knowledge.
But it just fits, it just fits,
you know, it makes, makes-- everything make sense.
There are those in psychiatry
who say that a traumatic experience can trigger
mental illness, schizophrenia.
While maybe it's genetic,
perhaps it's a traumatic event that triggers it.
One of the things we know about schizophrenia,
is that just having the genes by themselves,
is not enough,
there have to be other factors.
How much is nature? How much is nurture?
How much is the way you were treated in your life,
versus, how much did you come into life with
as a biological background.
Of course, most human diseases,
including cancer, are nature and nurture.
Donald played football and wrestled and was very athletic,
so the chances of him having head injury were pretty big.
He was sexually abused.
And so, there was trauma there.
And then Jim, he played sports too.
I think he was probably sexually abused as well.
For Brian...
...maybe psychedelic drugs,
yeah, maybe LSD and flashbacks might have been a trigger for him.
For Joe, he was in Chicago at the time that it happened, so,
maybe just working long hours at the airlines,
just being exhausted physically and emotionally and alone,
maybe loneliness could be a trigger.
Matt perhaps his crash into the hockey goal.
Been a lot of hospitalizations from trauma happening
from a physical party.
I was lucky to live through it after being in a haematoma,
blood clot haemorrhage, brain operation.
For Peter, witnessing my father's first stroke,
could have been that kind of traumatic event that might have
triggered the schizophrenia.
He once stated to me, you know, I had a pretty good life,
until this mental illness came along and ruined it.
(HYMNING)
I was trying so hard to normalise mental illness around my children,
and didn't...
...understand the consequences of exposing them
to so much mental illness.
Our intention was, um,
to try to expose the kids to the ill boys,
so that they would get to know them.
I think it's really important to normalise mental illness, um,
but I also think there's a lot
that I wish I hadn't known until I was a little bit older.
If you're not mentally equipped to handle this information,
you're not normalising it, you're inflicting more trauma,
um, whether you mean to or not.
I mean, no one's family's normal,
but not many people have six schizophrenic uncles.
Oh it has a been a minute.
The day I wake up on my 26th birthday,
will be a very happy day for me,
because that's like when scientists think
the male brain finishes developing.
I will feel like I've gotten past it
and then I have no percent chance now,
zero percent chance of developing schizophrenia,
I mean, none.
I think the fear started to set in once I was 12, 13, 14,
um, because, you know, the, the--
I was not doing things that other kids did,
like, I didn't play football, I didn't play hockey,
um, because, you know, fear of head injury,
eventually turning into schizophrenia.
When I hear a sound in the house,
I immediately look to see and figure out what it is.
I have that moment of like, anxiety, of like, did I just hear that, like,
was that me, or was that actually happening around me.
And, you know, for someone who fears that you've,
you run a very fine line,
because, I think you can convince yourself
that you're hearing things that you're not,
but you can tell yourself that you're hearing stuff
and eventually you will.
I think my brother was really affected by the idea of
possibly becoming schizophrenic,
that he started to smoke weed for the first time,
and he...
...would tell me what was going on,
for the most part,
and be like, oh I'm here, or this happened.
I started to get worried and telling my parents,
you know, what was going on and then he stopped telling me things.
And that was when I was--
Got really nervous about what was happening.
We were struggling that summer,
can't find him,
he's MIA, won't answer his phone, won't answer his texts.
-Yeah, that was a tough summer. -Mm-hmm.
Yeah, we were struggling with what to do.
I was self-destructive,
to the point where it was gonna affect my life in a serious way.
I started abusing drugs with my prescribed ADHD medication,
I was abusing that.
My mind was that if keeps going down this path,
he is gonna potentially develop major mental illness
-by his drug using. -Yeah, that's true.
His behaviours reminded me of things
that I suspected Peter had been up to, when he was young,
the two of them just reminded me of each other.
Oh, yeah.
We had been researching programs,
what we might do, where we might take him,
who might be able to help us.
But Jack just wouldn't fully engage in the process.
My parents really did not want to send him away.
Once that was decided,
my parents like made a plan,
they were gonna take him and his friend to the skate park,
and then they were gonna ask him to stay in the car
so they could talk to him for a minute.
And instead of that, they were just gonna drive away.
And, before they left, I put the child locks on the doors,
so that, once they started driving away,
he couldn't get out of the car.
He tried to like, kick out the windows,
and open the doors on the highway. (LAUGHS),
And I feel bad now, because like, how traumatic was that for him,
you know,
I can't imagine just like being sent away like that.
At the start,
this was perhaps the worst experience of my life,
having to take him down there and leave him there.
Turn, turn him over to someone else, was horrible.
It was, it was horribly traumatic,
-awful. -Absolutely, I.
But, then by the time we got to graduation,
it was the exact opposite.
What we met in Jack when he was done,
was... It was unbelievable.
I did think at the time,
maybe there's a preventative component
to an early intervention, but I (UNSURE OF WORD) that boy,
what if Peter had had this opportunity,
would he have ended up as bad as he is now?
(SINGING) Our father who art
in heaven Hallowed be thy name.
Growing up in this type of situation,
it felt like things were always happening...
Will be.
...you know, it was,
this is going with this brother and, and, you know, my mom being the,
the person that takes care of them,
its not like, we were, we were just hearing about it,
you know, we were there. Madness has defined my life.
I've lived too many days worried about it.
(SINGING) But deliver us from evil
I've done all the therapy,
but I'm still *bleep* afraid of schizophrenia.
Since she passed,
family's kind of broken apart in more ways than one,
you know, John's so far away,
he's been kind of separate from the family for a long time.
You know, Michael and I just never shared
a common bond of any sort to spend time together.
And for me,
you know, I've got my own three children
and my three grandchildren, and that's my life now.
My mother was, she was the centre and when she passed away,
the family has kind of fragmented more,
we're not together so much, especially my sister Margaret.
She's still hurting from everything that's gone on in the family
and she wants to just get away from it.
And, that's her, her way of dealing with it.
I ran away from it, you know, in my own way.
I'm just not a professional mental health care giver.
I don't think that's my calling. (CHUCKLES)
My parents were very clear in expressing to all of us
not just me,
but to my other siblings as well,
please don't desert them,
that was very clearly my parents message,
to all of us, not just me,
please don't desert them.
I can't find anything positive in being mentally ill,
the way they are.
And, it's such a loss of what could have been.
And I'm sure that they have different perspectives on that.
Try the 14 with the corner.
Peter and Matthew seem like they have some joy in their lives.
I used to love to play the pool when I (UNSURE OF WORD) again.
They're not,
they're not total-- I can still communicate with them.
I don't call Donald,
just because, I don't think there's a...
A communication between us.
I don't think that he would have anything to say,
that I could understand.
Mary seems to think that
we should try to have a relationship with my brothers, you know,
and try to be there for them and
I haven't been able to do that.
Hi Mary.
God, you look great.
Hi Pete, oh you (INAUDIBLE).
I just don't enjoy seeing them, I mean,
there's not much point to it.
Try to look and see what you need.
Yeah, here's more.
Oh, they think I'm being my mother,
I'm a martyr.
May, we-- I always called my mother a martyr.
You're doing what your mom did though,
in terms of making sure that they're taken care of.
Yeah, just let me follow.
I, I personally believe
that only through helping others do you really find true joy in life.
And I think you're missing out by not helping those closest to you,
when they need it, and they need it.
I didn't envision our family having
become divided the way it has in the last five years.
I thought we all had enough love and care for each other,
that everybody would step up and participate.
I obviously have a lotta anger around it still,
I'm trying,
I'm really trying to understand their perspective.
Mother and Father came to me specifically and said,
please, please.
There was no one else who could've handled it.
I mean, they said please do not, do not desert them,
and what I can see is that everyone else in my family has deserted them.
And maybe that was too big of a chore for him.
No, it's absolutely not. (CRIES)
I never thought I would be doing this by myself without you guys.
I never, in a million years thought
that my siblings would not be by my side through this.
You can not demean, you cannot put down,
you cannot demonish, your brothers and sisters for that,
-this is not your place. -I can be angry.
You're not the judge, you can be angry,
but don't be angry at your brothers and sisters.
I am angry at my brothers and sisters.
Because you think everybody can do what you can, that's wrong.
We're not professionally equipped to handle it.
-She is the only one who-- -Well, I'm looking at,
I don't see it.
She's the only one in this family--
Because I'm willing to be vulnerable?
-Vulnerability is power. -She's done it.
She has done it, I mean, she's taken care of
what's needed to be taken care of, and, she will continue to do that,
-she looks after the kids. -Does she?
She looks after Don, she looks after Matt and Peter.
I couldn't do that.
I wish I could've helped Mary more, but,
as far as me making arrangements for my brothers and seeing to it that
they have what they need, what those boys need, she does it,
she does it.
Do you think Mary's taken on too much?
Only she can answer that. (LAUGHS)
I hope that she knows she can always call me and lean on my shoulder,
from a distance, I can, I can talk and visit,
and support her, the best I can.
I'm the youngest of 12 children,
10 older brothers and one older sister.
Six of my brothers were diagnosed schizophrenics.
Donald, Matthew and Peter are fortunate,
because they're in nursing homes,
with people around them that care for them,
truly care for them.
People that have chosen this career
to help those who suffer are the real heroes.
The survivor guilt is unbelievable,
like, why am I not just bringing them into my home,
you know, like my mother chose to.
I don't know how she did it.
I think the pain,
the emotional pain that somebody suffers
from having schizophrenia is maybe worse than the disease itself.
Didn't I get into a lot of trouble in Boulder?
So, it's really debilitating,
not only to the person...
Hey, there's a picture, there's a picture
...but to the family too.
Can we work on a puzzle? I like puzzles.
(SIGHS) High handsome.
-You're cold. -Yeah, I know that,
-cold hands, warm heart. -Mmm. (LAUGHS).
Just because they are schizophrenic,
doesn't mean they don't have their own mind.
I mean, their minds a little broken,
but, when they're lucid, they're lucid,
and they want so badly to be normalized.
They don't want their condition to be scary or,
you know, to me,
schizophrenia is really tragic
and it's not their fault.