Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

Margaret

Even after marrying and beginning a family, Margaret continued to struggle with resentment towards Mimi, who she felt had neglected her as a child. As a result, she was frustrated when Lindsay began to spend more time with their mother in the years leading up to the Mimi’s death, caring for her in her fragile state and getting Mimi’s attention and some belongings in return.

Meanwhile, Margaret had finally taken up painting—a hobby she previously avoided for fear her mother would criticize her work. Though often abstract, much of her work was inspired by her family and their experiences; her paintings achieved some commercial success, but mainly served as a form of therapy for Margaret.

Although progress in the field has been slow, the state of schizophrenia research and treatment has evolved since the Galvin brothers’ diagnoses. Efforts to end the stigma surrounding mental illness have been bolstered by research suggesting that mental illnesses tend to exist on a spectrum not only with one another, but also within the population at large.

While it’s now known that repeated psychotic breaks can damage the brain, growing awareness of how damaging neuroleptic drugs themselves can be has led to experimentation with other forms of treatment: “A relatively new wave of research supports the effectiveness of so-called ‘soft interventions’: a mixture of talk therapy and family support, designed to keep the amount of medication to a minimum” (321).

Meanwhile, Freedman and others continue to investigate ways to either prevent schizophrenia entirely or to intervene before the patient experiences a full psychotic break. DeLisi’s family studies have also been vindicated, and when McDonough began working at Pfizer and learned the other half of her data was still in storage there, he launched a new genetic study of his own.

Margaret and Lindsay

After Mimi’s funeral, Margaret cut off contact with Lindsay, feeling that she was unfairly pressuring her siblings to take on as much as she had. Lindsay, meanwhile, was skeptical of Margaret’s insistence that involvement with the family hurt her overall well-being: “We both have worked very hard to save ourselves […] [b]ut she didn’t see trying to help them as any part of that, whereas I did” (327).

The healthy Galvin children decided to use the money from the house’s sale to make their brothers’ lives a little more enjoyable: outings to the opera for Donald, a new car for Matt, etc.: “Lindsay planned to get Colorado College hockey season tickets for Matt—something Mark might want to take him to, since they once loved playing together” (329).

After six months of silence, Lindsay and Margaret met to talk honestly about their grievances with one another and decided that, to move forward, they needed to accept their fundamentally different coping mechanisms.

Kate and Jack

While Lindsay’s two children, Kate and Jack, were growing up, their mother was quick to notice when either seemed to be showing signs of mental illness. Kate, for instance, had sensory difficulties as a young child, but with therapy and other interventions outgrew them, excelling in high school to the extent that she was able to skip a year of college.

Jack, meanwhile, received therapy as a child and was diagnosed with ADD. In his teens, he began to smoke marijuana and skip classes, sending his parents into a panic. With financial assistance from the Garys, they enrolled Jack in an outdoor youth therapy program and sent him to a boarding school designed for children struggling with substance use, mental illness, or behavioral disorders: “It was there that Lindsay and Rick learned that Jack’s issues had less to do with pot or ADD than with anxiety—the fear of becoming mentally ill” (333). By the time Jack returned home two years later, he had learned new coping techniques and hoped to one day work with troubled children himself.

In 2017, Kate’s interest in psychiatric research and unique family history earned her an internship with Freedman at just 18:

Lindsay’s daughter walked past the room where her mother and aunt and several of her uncles had come to test their auditory gating […] Her grandfather’s brain was probably lying around there someplace. She wondered how long it would take before she could have a look at it (335).