This book has been selected as one of the two “Silicon Valley Reads” books for 2018, and as a result, it seems to be everywhere in the Bay Area where I live, prominently displayed on library shelves and multiple copies available for check-out. The author, Mark Lukach, is also local to the Bay Area, a high school teacher and freelance writer. As the title suggests, it is a memoir of his experience with the mental illness that afflicted the person he was closest to – his wife, Giulia.

Mark and Giulia had a fairy tale romance – they met as freshmen at Georgetown University, dated, fell in love, got married and moved to San Francisco to start their careers. They both come from loving families and had little to complain about – they were smart, good looking, ambitious (she more than him), and most importantly, they had each other.

Their idyllic life was unexpectedly shattered three years into their marriage by Giulia’s psychotic breakdown, which came literally out of nowhere. It started out with some normal stress at work which caused her some pressure, most self-imposed, and quickly ballooned into a full-blown panic attack, making her delusional and suicidal. She had to be admitted to the psych ward and was there for almost a month before she was allowed to come home. She went on to have two more psychotic episodes, one shortly after the birth of their son, and again a few years after that. The book closes with what seems to be the end of the third hospitalization. However, given the nature of this illness and its typical pattern, Giulia’s psychosis is likely to recur, so this is by no means the end of the struggle for her and Mark.

This book captures Mark’s harrowing experience as he goes from being a “normal,” carefree, happily married young man — who can scarcely believe his good fortune at being able to spend the rest of his life with the girl he fell in love with — to having his life completely upended and being thrust in the role of caregiver to the same girl who now seems to be a completely different person. Caregiving is hard enough for physical illness, but at least the person that is being looked after is the same — the illness may have devastated their bodies, but not their minds. With mental illness, however, the person can literally become someone else. In Giulia’s case, while she was eventually able to get back to the person she was after the end of each of three psychotic episodes she has had so far, Mark had to keep drawing from the memories of their earlier life together to keep going when she became ill.

And the “going” was unimaginably rough — doctor’s appointments, hospital visits, keeping up with work, worrying about rapidly draining finances, looking after their baby boy during her second episode, and continuing to be a single dad to a preschooler during her third hospitalization. Thankfully, both his and her parents were very supportive and tried to help out as much as they could, but there was only so much that they could do. It really was his “cross to bear.” In addition to being physically exhausted and having no time for himself, Mark also captures his anger, his resentment, and his feelings of helplessness candidly. Even though he knows that it’s not Giulia’s fault that she is mentally ill, he can’t help being frustrated to the point where it seems almost impossible to go on.

I found My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward a brutally honest account of how mental illness can come from nowhere and utterly devastate lives, not just for those who are ill but for their family members, who have to continue to look after them even when they become completely different people who often have delusions, hallucinations, manic depressions, and suicidal tendencies. Kudos to Mark for not giving up on his marriage — the thought of skipping out because it was too hard did not even occur to him. In a day and age when close to half of all marriages in the US end in divorce, Mark’s commitment to Giulia is an inspiring affirmation of the “in sickness and in health” maxim that a marriage is supposed to embody.

My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward
Author: Mark Lukach
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: May 2017

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Contributor: Lachmi Khemlani runs a technology publication in the San Francisco Bay Area.